Spring Break
Movie Reviews
David Coley
Issue date: 3/5/07 Section: Culture
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'Zodiac'
Let me start out by saying I recognize what an undertaking "Zodiac" must have been.
It is based on an as-yet unsolved serial-killer investigation that spans several decades and encompasses numerous suspects, victims and crime scenes. The body of material is staggering, and to its credit, the script tries to cover all the bases.
Yet one of the jobs of a screenwriter when adapting from another source is to weed out the details that will not add to the spirit and effectiveness of the film. What writer James Vanderbilt seems to do in this film is to cram in every piece of information he can find.
When the filmmakers announce at the beginning that the film is "based on actual case files," they mean it.
It feels like you're actually reading them.
The movie follows a meticulous timeline, from the late '60s to the early '90s. It starts with a murder on the fourth of July, which you soon find out is the second killing by the Zodiac. The killer sends letters to the major newspapers in San Francisco announcing what he has done and that he will do it again. He includes codes he wants run on the front pages, daring anyone to crack them.
Hot on his trail are the central figures of the story: the cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhall), the reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr.) and the detective David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo). When one of the codes is cracked, they race to figure out the vague references in the message to stop him before he kills again.
This eventually leads to several suspects, but the Zodiac continues to terrorize the city and the surrounding areas. The three men spend years giving up their time and happiness to try to catch him. They hope desperately they will uncover a crucial clue.
I hoped that too, at least for the first half of the film.
Because he follows the case files so faithfully, Vanderbilt falls into a natural dramatic flaw in the narrative. A little more than an hour into the two-and-a-half-hour film, the killings stop. The men continue to work at the investigation, but the imminent danger that gave the film its suspense is gone. It just keeps going with no end in sight. When it finally does end, it is wholly unsatisfying considering what the audience has just endured.
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