An intriguingly unflashy serial killer

David Fincher’s Se7en and Fight Club are spectacular films and clearly bear the mark of their director’s visual style and brutal world view. Zodiac returns Fincher to the world of serial killers but this is no high concept slasher, it’s the real story of a cartoonist’s obsession with the unsolved murders of the Zodiac killer from seventies San Franciso. However the traditional Fincher audaciousness with the camera has been wound right down, and all that remains is the the camera, the actors and the story.

The detail focus of the protaganist clearly resonates with Fincher, as Robert Graysmith (Jake Gylenhall) struggles with his obsession; piecing together the disparate clues and codes left by the killer, both during his killings and many years afterward, as his family crumbles around him. Ably supported, in the movie by David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), the policeman searching for the Zodiac, who is marshaling the multiple jurisdictions of the county force, seemingly working at odds, and hunting the man he believes is the killer. Also featured is Robert Downey Jr, who mumbles through his role as Paul Avery, a confrontational alcoholic journalist who is threatened by the Zodiac – seemingly a ridiculous cliche were this not a real person.

The movie does meander over the nearly three hour run time, and for a great section of the film we descend into a standard police procedural before returning to the core narrative of Gylenhall’s character. Again, the women are reduced to ciphers which is typical Fincher (Jodie Foster in Panic Room aside) Graysmith’s wife merely seems to wander into frame, complain a bit, and then wander off again – eventually permanently, but with no real emotional impact on the story.

However despite it’s overlong running time and meandering narritive, the film remains gripping not only due to strong but unshowy direction and excellent work of Gylenhall and Ruffalo, but the ‘unsatisfying’ and ‘unhollywood’ unresolved ending necessitated by the escape of the real life Zodiac.