Has David Fincher decided he has to atone for ‘Seven’, his 1995 cat-and-mouse thriller which gave serial killers and their crimes a renewed sheen of Hollywood cool? His latest offering, ‘Zodiac’, presented 5 years after ‘Panic Room’, a claustrophobic mess that probably warrants the most penance among his previous works, tracks the long, frustrating and ultimately fruitless struggle to apprehend the real-life serial killer, Zodiac, a letter-writing, cipher-making lunatic who terrorized the citizens of California and stumped its police force in the late 60s and early 70s. Opening with a surprisingly matter-of-fact depiction of a Zodiac killing, the movie quickly shifts its focus to the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the main recipients of the Zodiac’s letters, and the investigatory efforts of the San Francisco policemen assigned to the case. A few more attacks are shown, in a similarly unglamorous manner, where pertinent, but what follows is partly a police procedural of sorts, intercut with the efforts of two journalists, the grandstanding Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr,) and the increasingly obsessed cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gylenhall) to crack the case. Haflway through, Graysmith’s efforts dominate the movie, which is only fair since the script is adapted from one of two books he wrote about the case.

 

Perhaps what most sets this movie up as the anti-Seven (and by extension, an antithesis to all the slick slasher flicks we’ve been seeing lately) is how inconclusive and de-stylised it is. In movies, serial killers are crafty and flashy, their pursuers are brilliant and driven and the payoff, whether a set-up for a sequel or a genuine resolution, is dramatic, even cathartic. In Zodiac, and presumably in real life, the killer is a twisted, often incoherent person who might simply drop out of the killing business because the heat is on, or his psychotic episodes have resolved themselves somehow, his pursuers are conflicted, error-prone mortals who may not be able to make the necessary connections through incompetence, confusion or simple bad luck, and endings are rarely tidy.

 

The drawback of telling a true to life story like this is that there are huge stretches of downtime, as leads dry up, clues go cold, the killings peter out and investigators lose the will or the drive to go on. This process took years in real life; it makes for around least 30 minutes of dull space halfway through the film, which is a bit of a problem when you have a two-and-a-half hour long movie on your hands. Then, driven by an all-consuming urge to crack the case that has haunted him for so long (and contributes to the breakup of his marriage), the aforementioned cartoonist, Graysmith, steps up his investigation. He finds all sorts of new connections and clues in the evidence and builds a theory which suggests that the killer was, in fact, one of the previously considered suspects. However, he is unable to put together anything more than a circumstantial case. There is one telling red herring, where the cartoonist finds himself all alone in a basement with a man whom he suddenly realizes perfectly fits his current working profile of the Zodiac. This is a great scene, the biggest scare in the whole movie, and it shows how easily the world can become an echo chamber of our own fears, especially when there are real monsters abroad.

 

The supporting cast was exceptionally good in this movie, an important point in such a crowded story – but I was less convinced by Jake Gylenhall. He plays the wide-eyed Jimmy Olson type of the early years well, but doesn’t really pull off the obsession that takes over later, or indeed the aging process. Robert Downey, Jr. is effective as a man going down a spiral of alcoholism and drug addiction,, and I’m not making a flippant reference to his real-life troubles here. He has one of the more minor roles of the starring actors here, but he gives it a presence and weight that the other lead players don’t really match. He does mumble a lot, though. Mark Ruffalo is surprisingly low-key as a police detective who, in real life, served as the inspiration for Dirty Harry. He’s given a weak stab at a running gag about Animal Crackers; fortunately the gag is soon dropped. John Carroll Lynch hits just the right note of unsettling banality underscored with a hint of menace as Arthur Allen Leigh, the leading suspect in the case.

 

This is a surprisingly compelling, if often static, movie that trades flash for focus and ought to reward repeated viewings. Just don’t go to it expecting Saw 4, or indeed Seven 2 (which they’d probably call Se2en on the posters; we have been spared).

 

3 Thadiyans out of 5.