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Zodiac
2007
Based on the Robert Graysmith books about the real life notorious Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized San Francisco with a string of seemingly random murders during the 1960s and 1970s. Read more
| Starring | Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Chloe Sevigny, Anthony Edwards |
|---|---|
| Director | David Fincher |
| Genres | Drama, Thriller |
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Zodiac
Based on the Robert Graysmith books about the real life notorious Zodiac, a serial killer who terrorized San Francisco with a string of seemingly random murders during the 1960s and 1970s.
| Starring | Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Chloe Sevigny, Anthony Edwards, Gary Oldman, Mark Ruffalo, Ione Skye, Clea Duvall, Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, John Carroll Lynch, Dermot Mulroney, Donal Logue, Pell James, Charles Fleischer, Jimmi Simpson |
|---|---|
| Director | David Fincher |
| Studio | WARNER BROS |
| Run time | DVD: 2 hrs 38 mins Blu-ray: 2 hrs 35 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Drama, Thriller |
| Language | English |
| Released | DVD: 17 Sep 2007 Blu-ray: 29 Sep 2008 Production year: 2007 |
| Format | DVD |
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Critics' reviews
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Most helpful member's review
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118 out of 124 people found this review helpful
Zodiac
David Fincher retreads the serial killer genre with his latest offering Zodiac. Following the true-life case of the killings in the San Francisco area in the late 60's and 70's, Zodiac is not your usual true crime film.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle, who becomes obsessed with discovering the identity of the killer who has labelled themself 'ZODIAC'. When the killer begins sending letters to the newspaper, Graysmith takes an active interest in the case. But this is not just Graysmith's story, it is also the story of crime reporter Paul Avery (portrayed superbly by Robert Downey Jr) and lead police officer David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo in his best performance to date). You get to see how the crimes affect the three and how their lives were changed because of the killings and subsequent hunt for the killer.
The supporting cast is a who's who of acting pedigree, from Brian Cox's lawyer to Philip Baker Hall as a document's expert.
Many true crime films rely on heavy violence to tell the story, Zodiac does not. Whilst you see some of the murders, they are never portrayed in a gratuitous or exploitative way. The focus on the film being on the obsession of the main characters rather than the sensationalism of the crimes.
Even though the film has a running time of 158 minutes, the pacing of the film means that you never get bored. It is so tightly edited that not a moment of screen time is wasted. Added to that, you have a constant undercurrent of suspense that puts many modern horror films to shame. There are some scary moments, and none more than the fact that this is a true story.
Fincher is a master of visual style and this film is no different. The film looks like a seventies film (even down to classic 70's Warner and Paramount logos at the start).
The film also stays true to the source material, Graysmith's book 'Zodiac', and does not veer off into any moments of dramatic license. It is fact based, and because of this engages the audience more.
This is my film of the year so far. It is thought provoking and so well made it should be a blue print for how true crime films should be made. Great performances by all involved and the attention to detail is amazing (even down to radio adverts for the Rolling Stones' Altamont gig).
The film is up there with the best of true crime films, such as The Boston Strangler and To Catch A Killer. This is David Fincher, and his cast, on top form. -
Most recent members' review
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10 out of 13 people found this review helpful
Best of an otherwise dry year so far...
Nothing short of impressive, in concept and in execution. Fincher seems to have a wide vocabulary of filmmaking tools, and, perhaps more importantly, the confidence to employ them, for various means. This is a deep, intelligent and convincing delve into subjective verisimilitude, with not only shifting character identities, but a self-conscious nod to how the film has come to be made: the author of the book from which it is adapted remarks at one point, 'I'm thinking of writing a book', and, years later, we see it as a bestseller on shelves at an airport. The viewer, like everyone else inside the film, has, at the end of it all, no real concrete idea of who the Zodiac killer is. The one difference, however, is that we're viewing events not as victims, but as viewers to a manipulated narration of events. Fincher knows this; the opening is incredibly tense, frightening and finally shocking, as we see it through the eyes of the boy, the killer's first victim (in the film if not real life); later, when we revisit this first murder, we 'watch' it again (mentally, because we're not shown it) through the girl's eyes, since it is revealed or supposed that she knew who the killer was. To go through the film scene-by-scene identifying all the different gazes through which we identify with the film's meaning would take far too long (though it would surely be beneficial to the appreciation of how immensely intelligent it is), but a few points to note: the point at which Gyllenhall's obsessed cartoonist has come to the foray of investigations is the point at which the actual killings are far in the past (both in story time, which is years, and narrative time, which is hours) and the identity of the killer is at its most obscure and elusive (because of all the endless details and clues cluttering up the narrative, and the emphasis on basic demarcations such as handwriting and fingerprints). There's one scene, in which he is persuaded down into the basement of an elderly man's home, who began the scene as a possible witness and before descending rapidly into prime suspect - he hasn't really, of course, but it's constructed, like the rest of the film, so that we view the film through a certain character's psychological state, and so when he turns off the basement light, all sorts of things are suggested. Soon after, alone at home, Gyllenhall hears his back door open, and the moving shadow on the wall takes on an almost expressionistic effect in creating meaning, in this case the absurd paranoia of his character - but for a title at the end, we might even doubt whether he received anonymous, heavy-breathing phone calls at all. There's one moment, too, early on, which shows somebody who we assume to be the killer, shown with the non-diegetic phone call of him informing the police of another killing - it seems out-of-place in a film about an unsolved murder spree, but it's decidedly clever, in further mystifying the entire case in (fictional) retrospect. Fincher employs his usually smooth pans, tracks and shot-to-shot transitions as well as proving how far ahead of most others he is at CGI - some of the period reconstructions are flawless and beautiful, including a birdseye-view tracking shot of a taxicab on its way to murder, and a gorgeous establishing shot of the Golden Gate Bridge - again, even if this time the city is specific and not anonymous (like in Seven), he is very, very effective in evoking location. At 160 minutes, its duration belies the discipline with which it has been made: every direction it takes, be it a cut, shift in gaze or narrative thread, a pan or a track, seems motivated.
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News and features
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David Fincher: Real Zodiac was scary
- 18 May 2007
The period when self-named serial killer Zodiac terrorised San Francisco was "very scary", director David Fincher has said. Fincher, who previously made Seven, Fight Club and Alien 3, grew up in the area during the 1960s and 70s, and told the Guardian it was impossible to be unaffected by the murderer's actions. "Growing up around Zodiac warped your little mind," Fincher remarked in an interview about his new film, which tells the story of three men hunting the killer - who... Read more
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David Fincher's (FIGHT CLUB, SE7EN) adaptation of the Robert Graysmith book masterfully transports viewers to the Bay Area in the 1960s and '70s by drawing on actual case files from the notoriously ... -
