From Chronicle to Chronic
This film ought to re-titled as The Obsession of a Cartoonist. If you like plodding storylines garnished with irrelevances then this is for you. Most of this should have ended up on the cutting room floor. Leave it to Dirty Harry, he had it sorted in around two hours with bags of action.
How this case became a film during it's inconclusion baffles me as it clearly mocks the S.F.P.D. There were one or two scenes worthy of inclusion into a thriller but this epic just chewed them up and spat them out. I personally felt had I been a cop investigating then I'd be doing time for homicide on the cartoonist(he never really had a funny side though?), the Chronicles Editor or the so called Handwriting Expert who couldn't find the commitment to file this one away.
I was further puzzled by the interview of the suspect who gave more than enough away, perhaps intentionally mocking his pursuers, as to why they hadn't put him in a line-up? One surviving victim was shown looking at photo's twenty odd years later. Very odd.

Slow
This was a good incite, but too slow to really be considered a 'great' film. Many of the conclusions whilst compelling still lend themselves to a lack of proof. However, that said I did enjoy the film, but it would have been so much better had it been 30 minutes shorter. Also, in the Region 1, the epilogue was far too small thus whatever information they were trying to impart was lost in a small haze.

Two decades in the life
I watched a film today, oh boy
About a quiet man who wrote a book
And though the book did rather well
No one had time for laughs
They saw the photographs
Of people shot dead in their cars
They didn't know at first the killer's name
A group of letters soon appeared
He said he'd killed them all
Nobody was really sure if he was just leading them on

I saw a film today, oh boy
About a killer named the Zodiac
And though the film was rather sad
Well I just had to look
Having missed the book
It really was quite long

(to the tune of "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles)

First of all, this movie is more like a crime documentary, focusing mainly on the tedious and labor intensive background work that went into the investigation of the murders that took place in the San Francisco Bay area in the sixties. From the title, you already know that the killer is the infamous (and so far unidentified) Zodiac, and because the case is still unsolved, the ending is understandably vague.

The next thing you should know is that it's a long movie that takes you step by step through the case from the shooting of Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau to the publication of Robert Graysmith's first book of the same name.

It very effectively chronicles the personal and career upheavals of the main characters, especially the fixation of Graysmith (Sensitive guy Jake Gyllenhaal who's no stranger to obsessive roles), the dedication of Inspector David Toschi (a rumpled looking Mark Ruffalo) and the unpredictability of crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jnr. doing what he does best).

At some points you can almost hear Graysmith's torment - "I wish I knew how to quit you Zodiac killer" - and at these moments you'll wish for Lilly Rush and the Cold Case team to come in and solve it once and for all. Recommended for people into true crime stories, but for obvious reasons you won't learn much more about Zodiac that you already know.






Amanda Richards

Cerebral
The story is involving, without ever really going anywhere.

There is little or no action.

The violence seems imported from another film.

The cast is largely toothless.

But I still loved it.

Ignore movie reviews.

A Self-Important TV True Crime Movie Gone Wild
In the 70s and 80s there was a phenomenon on TV called the True Crime Story. They gained popularity after successful forays into the world of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, the Hillside Killings and Son Of Sam. They tended to be based on books put out by one of the protagonists and especially popular were those written by a journalist or bizarrely a lawyer who had accepted novelisation rights in lieu of a fee. Robin Graysmith does not fit into these categories he was a cartoonist but that didn't stop him styling himself an expert on the Zodiac case. Like many of the True Crime movies the writer of the source book becomes the hero of the story - whether he is or not - the producers of this film must be aware of the limitations of Graysmith's 'expertise' inasmuch as they are keen to let us know that the 'actual case files' were used in scripting the film. They are however stuck with Graysmith as the hero and it is the major failing of the movie that its central character should be so chronically unsympathetic. He is clearly despised by workmates and police alike and his obsessional increasingly manic behaviour does not endear him either to his family or the viewer. The premise of the movie is that the case damaged the lives of 4 people - 2 cops and 2 journalists - the problem starts with the story being told from the point of view of only one of the 4, one so self-obsessed that the characters of the other 3 are never developed and the story-teller has to spend much of his time in self-justification.
There was clearly a mega-budget and a stellar cast that manages to include Clea Duval in a 90 second cameo and Ione Skye in an uncredited appearence. Top quality actors move in and out of the film with careless abandon, Chloe Sevigny, Brian Cox and John Carroll Lynch among those few able to make an impression with limited opportunities. Of the leads Anthony Edwards escapes with his reputation intact, and Mark Ruffalo copes with his episodic appearences with a one-note performance. Jake Gyllenhall is handed an impossible task, from the first the Graysmith character's involvement in the Zodiac story can only be explained by presenting him as a lurking oddball. The actor has to base his performance on the character presented in the book which is at best 1 dimensional. The unluckiest actor, however, is Robert Downey Jr. who has to play the real Crime reporter, Paul Avery, who's character has to undergo violent changes as he only appears in relation to his meetings with Graysmith. The confident able journalist at the beginning of the film has to descend into drugged-up idiocy in an entirely incoherent time frame.
This type of film is always dishonest it claims an infallibility that it does not possess. The device of running the film to 2.75 hours should not be any indication of worth, it is rather a sign of unstructured story-telling. There is great film to me made on the story of the Zodiac killings, this however is not that film.

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