Zodiac (2007)

Until Netflix announced the end of its streaming, I kept vacillating on whether to see this, because I find David Fincher enjoyable only about half the time. Another serial killer story under his direction could have invoked unwelcome memories of the popular but extremely disturbing Se7en. Fortunately, having seen Dirty Harry (which gets referenced in Zodiac), I knew that the real killer who called himself the Zodiac had more conventional murder methods. If you can take bloody stabbings and shootings, both survived and not, with no autopsy details, then you can probably take this movie.

The only professional review I'd read -- a mere blurb -- noted the large proportion of time characters spend talking, rather than...I dunno, being Dirty Harry? What did he expect? One fictionalized friendship aside, it aims for a mostly true story -- so seriously, in fact, that the producers hired a PI to find one of the Zodiac's live victims (other relevant characters were more readily reachable). That said, it does feel like they didn't need 2 1/2 hours to tell it. We get the picture: It was a hard case to crack. The mystery is still not officially solved after 40+ years, which limits the potential for satisfaction among viewers at the end. But the mere fact that the film got the case reopened does it credit.

In keeping with his reputation, the Zodiac himself is a piece of work. Unlike the Se7en guy, he doesn't insist on any moral basis for his actions; he just waxes eloquent in letters to the press (printed out of fear) about how much fun they are. And how his victims will be his slaves in paradise, which, if he believes it, leaves me wondering where he got the idea. His mix of judicious caution and self-defeating carelessness can only befit a madman.

But while the Zodiac may have sold the tickets, he's not really the star of the program, being, y'know, unknown. He's even played by multiple actors to drive that point home. We get better acquainted with a handful of part-time focal leads. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a novice editorial cartoonist turned amateur detective, gets excited and obsessed easily enough to forget his surroundings, a habit that moves between adorkable and annoying. Journalist Paul Avery is your typical Robert Downey, Jr. character: intelligent, unpredictable, unruly, and eventually prone to drinking. Only Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) has any police-sanctioned business taking the case, and he's none too pleased.

Was I pleased? To a point, yes. It was interesting to see all the obstacles to cracking the case. For one thing, not every act that looked like the Zodiac's work necessarily was. His handwriting is unstable and hard to match with certainty, leading to a theory of ambidexterity. Multiple cities' police departments have to cooperate on information. Individual detectives get personal threats. Lots of time can pass between apparent Zodiac attacks. The film indicates a prime suspect (now dead) but only circumstantial evidence, however improbable the many coincidences would be if he wasn't the Zodiac.

Oh, about that second-to-last sentence: There are many, many time skips forward in the movie, anywhere from a few days to more than a decade. Between those and the shifting character focus, it gets pretty dizzying. Really, my main caveat is not that Zodiac may disgust or bore you but that it may wear you out before it's even half over. If I'd rented it on disc, I would've split the viewing over two nights. Nevertheless, I don't regret viewing at all.