Sometimes I like to sum up my life into two parts: before David Fincher and after. My life before was your usual coming of age story of a young boy consantly searching for the next best thing of interest in nearly everything I did. Weather it be a cool new book, video game or movie I could share with my friends, it seemed as if every day was a new world of exploration for me. Then it all changed the night I first laid my young, vulnerable eyes on Se7en. Even then I knew something was different about the style of film I was watching. I had never seen anything as dark and imaginative at that point in my life and from then on, I vowed to find other films just as great or its equal. I failed many times in my attempt to do so however but my curiosity was in fact reborn.
Zodiac just happens to be one of Fincher's films that slipped through the cracks for me. I knew it existed. I heard it was good many times over but yet I never really gave it the time of day until recently. From the first shot of the film you can see Fincher's stamp all over it. His incredible attention to detail in the lighting and tone of each scene seems to pull you in almost immediately.
Starting on July 4th 1969 and into the 70's, the movie follows the exploits of a serial killer terrorizing the bay area and centers in on the lives of a young cartoonist, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and a seasoned reporter, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) who work for the San Fransisco Chronicle. Graysmith is young and eager while Avery is on the verge of full-blown alcoholism. Even though the two had been working in the same office for several months, they don't get close to each other until a common interest in the zodiac killer takes over their lives at work and then in their personal lives.
As interest turns to obsession, Graysmith eventually crosses paths with the lead inspector on the case, David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), with whom he ends up in a downward spiral into abberation and paranoia as the killer toys with them by sending letters bearing his insignia to police stations and newspapers throughout the San Fransisco area. Eventually Graysmith writes a book on the Zodiac killer and ends up in a waltz with madness in a dark empty room where his family used to reside before he became more interested in the story than their lives together.
In Zodiac, the lines between fact and fiction are blurred almost seamlessly through character development and plot. The look and feel of this film really immerses you into that 70's west coast crime thriller atmosphere and never seems to fully leave you even after the film is put back on the shelf. That is the magic of another great David Fincher title. When you watch this film and look back on the source material, you can see the painstaking attention to detail. In a "based on true events" story such as this one, it really helps that in the end you don't necessarily care about how the issues are resolved but yet, bask in the journey that this film eventually takes you on.
4.5 out of 5 with ease.
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