Zodiac

I have been waiting to see this film all year. I finally picked up the DVD from the library, but the baseball playoffs have distracted me from my movie watching.

I woke up at 3:30 this morning and couldn't fall back to sleep so I grabbed my pillow, headed for the couch, and started watching Zodiac. One hundred fifty-seven minutes later, I was still glued to the TV. What a story. What a script. What a cast.

David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room) has made a masterpiece. Mark Ruffalo plays Dave Toschi, the San Francisco police detective in charge of the investigation into the late 1960s/early 1970s murders by the Zodiac killer. Robert Downey Jr. is the San Francisco Chronicle reporter who tracked the case and Jake Gyllenhaal is the cartoonist (!) for the Chronicle who eventually became immersed in his own amateur investigation.

The Zodiac killer emerged in the late sixties in Northern California. He sent letters to the press and included cryptograms, most of which have never been solved. The Zodiac killer was never apprehended.

Fincher's film essentially focuses on obsession. The killer is obsessed with murdering his victims, toying with the police and finding some sort of perverse fame. The men who investigate the Zodiac killer are equally obsessed with learning the killer's identity and discovering his motives.

Frightening and fascinating, Zodiac is one of the best films of the year.