"Zodiac" (2007) - Movie Review

Before I was about to watch, “Zodiac”, there was a little uncomfortable ness in me. The nudge in my heart was that whether a movie about a serial killer who shook the San Francisco really necessary? The brutal crimes which resulted in ripples of victims with their families suffering for so many years, is to be made at all? Since this is directed by David Fincher who gave cult hit “Fight Club” and nerve racking thrillers such as “Seven” and “The Game”, I had some confidence that my nudge will be cleared off. It did. “Zodiac” excels with terrific presentation and some rigorous extensive search for the souls inside a group of people who dedicated their lives trying to hunt down the killer.

The film starts off with the lovers getting shot by a man in dark in a remote town in 1969. Then the newspaper San Francisco Chronicle receives strange cryptic codes with the letters from the killer himself. In the subsequent further killings and letters to the newspaper, the killer gives himself the name “Zodiac”. Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the cartoonist in the newspaper and silently observes all these and gets himself close with the reporter who is covering it, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.). Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Inspector William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) gets assigned to the case when the killing hits the San Francisco main city. Rest of the movie deals with the internal strategies, the strenuous efforts and unusual soul search of Robert Graysmith. This movie is not about the killer. This movie is about the wide spectrum of people who dedicated their career and lives to find the truth.

This is the most truthful and unusual movie in this genre. While “Seven” dealt with the stress and strains of the police officers involved in a serial killer case, “Zodiac” goes beyond that. It brings down the public reaction and how the series of events alters the fulcrum of how a city operates. The story depicts the curiosity of the people who believe that the danger will never strike them and the people who take advantage of it. The political obstacles with respect to the co-ordination of all the killings in different regions, the time progress and the lead investigation, the obsession of one person to find the truth and the search of the conscience in oneself to go for a hunt like this are some of the very few main topics the film offers. The fear the killings brought and the disturbance in a day to day life and as time flies by, it becomes obsolete with being piled up as junk files in some cabinet in a deserted town. The film brings how a gruesome act looses its brutality in the public as the time goes on. How the citizens forget and get delved in their own lives. As it is said in widespread as “Truth is stranger than fiction”, this movie demonstrates it in the most extensive fashion anyone can imagine.

The depth and the labour of the information and extensiveness of the subject are evident throughout the screen. Covering the whole incidents ranging from 1969 till the 90s is an arduous task for any director and this film travels between those in a manner without any disturbance. That reminds anyone on how much work the editing and screenplay would have required. The elimination and addition of the scenes to extract the right contents and formulae to bring out the quality in this movie is simply brilliant.

There are at the least seven to eight main characters in this film and they take on it right in the spots required. Jake Gyllenhaal once again proves his presence. Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards working with each other as partners are unnoticeably interesting. The same chemistry works out in a very mild manner in between the characters of Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery and Jake’s portrayal of Robert Graysmith.

There are brilliant sequences which spits out the sad truth of the progress of the killings and the intense ness in various situations. The viewers are up for the most extensive and in depth investigation portrayed on screen. The viewers feel the tired ness in each character investigating for a long period of time. The viewers get restless as the police officers do. They want an answer for all this senseless crimes. They need to pin down so that they can go home and sleep peacefully. The cop’s sense of satisfaction for their sleep to be justified for making one more night safer for the city and its people. Robert Graysmith wants to know the truth still not being his job is another portrayal of how a conscience filled person reacts. He knows that his aware ness is a bit more than most of the common man in the city. He is shy and feels it’s not his place. He tries to contact with the people who do their job of this hunt. He wants to assist but does not get the motivation. His drive to do something comes from his minimal mentorship, Paul Avery’s drunken frustration.

The movie is the true depiction of how justice behaves in a strange way. While one may question the whole system of implicating a criminal, the foremost fundamental format of rights of a free man getting weighed against a one deviant in the system through a serial killer is untold but felt through the movie. “Zodiac” gives a chance to all the people to tap the inner questions and truth to know factor. This is the film which may be viewed as a serious commercial movie but has all the subtleties of harsh messages. The viewers get the same drive what Robert got driven to. When the cops get fed up, there lies the responsibility as a citizen to do the best anyone can do. Robert says that he needs to see in the eyes of killer and know the truth when his wife asks what he is aiming in this obsession of finding the killer and so does the viewer.

“Zodiac” is one of the most detailed and well researched movies since “JFK”. Clearly it molds out the purpose of it. I am saying it again, it is not about the killer but it is about the people who gave their souls and lives for finding him. David Fincher does not spend his time on the killings but on the people who wanted it to stop. Rather than so many complains and misuses in the name of the killer, “Zodiac” sheds the light on the unknown regions of the dark and dirty work of the cops and a cartoonist’s search for truth. While both of them arrive at the same place, the process and the reasoning defines who they are and how the world still is running on a safe land.