The Good
A strongly put together film that shows us the fastidious nature its director.
The Bad
The fact that a 2 disc, Special Edition of this release was just announced for 2008.
Zodiac is a highly procedural account of a string of murders that took place in Northern California in the 1960s and 1970s. What made everything about this case so interesting is that the killer seemed to actively enter into a game with the police. He would send them clues and try and bait them into catching him. They did their best to try and solve the codes, cyphers and other bits of information that he would pass along, but it always seemed like the killer they were after was just elusive enough to get away. The first half of this movie shows us Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) trying to get to the bottom of things. He is led on wild goose chases, follows a good many red herrings but ultimately after driving down every lead eventually stops working on the case.
This is where reporter Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) enters the picture. As someone who is good at puzzles he starts working on the case. Little by little he begins to follow in the footsteps of Toshchi until he eventually takes things further than anybody could ever imagine. The problem that the Zodiac ust as shrewd as always and even though it seems like Graysmith is going to put things together, the truth of the story is that he will only get so close. Risking his life, driving his family to the brink, the power of Zodiac is in the fact that viewers don’t seem to mind going on the same journey to get basically the same result. The biggest difference is the amount of information that Graysmith compiles, mixed in with how he compiles it that makes this story stand out in the way that it does.
While Zodiac might be seen as somewhat of a failure considering David Fincher’s other successes, in the world of art vs. commerce, never has the point been stronger that everything is indeed relative.
Features
No Extras came with this release.
Video
Widescreen Version Enhanced for 16:9 TVs. David Fincher keeps things very dark in this film, and like a lot of movies from the 1960s and 1970s he lets his editing work as his style. The images looked just about as good as they did on my DVD player as opposed to when I saw them in the theater. Truthfully, what stood out the most for me with this movie was how amazing the period looked on screen. This film seems like it is of that time. Fincher seems to have exercised a great deal of restraint in order to pull that off. He seems to have mixed all the finest attributes of Fight Club and Se7en and thus this film has even more power within the story it is putting across.
Audio
Dolby Digital: English 5.1 Surround. French 5.1 Surround. Subtitles: English, Spanish. The audio on this release good. Nothing about really jumped out at me and grabbed me in an amazing way, but that isn’t because of anything that was and wasn’t done by the makers of this film. I don’t think that a movie like this needs some incredible sound design. The audio, namely the soundtrack, seemed to strike the most ominous notes in the film. This helped play well into the story and as a result it worked well and didn’t get in the way of the proceedings.
Package
Mark Ruffalo, Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. are shown on this front cover with the Golden Gate Bridge underneath them leading into San Francisco. This cover has a nice greenish/blue tint that seems to forebode this movie. The back cover features a mix of colored images, all of which tell us about the film but at the same time don’t tell us about the film. There is a very tiny description of what this movie is about, a cast list and technical specs.
Final Word
I remember first seeing the trailer for Zodiac and being a tad put off. The music and series of images employed made this film look like comedy. Since I was already familiar with this story I was wondering why David Fincher would allow his movie to be presented this way? Then someone pointed out that he was most likely trying to steer away viewers from seeing how dark this movie actually was. Whatever the reason, I didn’t go into this film with the usual excitement that I have for Fincher’s movies. However, once the credits rolled I was hooked. This movie works because it isn’t a star vehicle in the slightest. There is no agenda here. There isn’t some grand point or amazing scheme to be uncovered. This movie presents things to us in a classic, “just the facts” way that never seems to go off on many tangents. In fact, so solid is the restructuring of events that it seems like viewers could come in and out of this film and as long as they were patient they could figure out what was going on.
Lastly, what is the most surprising about Zodiac is how totally unselfconscious it feels as a movie. It is packed with stars yet that isn’t played up at all. In addition to this, it isn’t maligned by a lot of the self referential, slow paced acting that seems to pervade so many movies trying to make a point.
