Zodiac

ZODIAC is a terrific film, once you get past the fact that it isn't about Zodiac.

Director David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club, Panic Room) gives the movie a completely absorbing feel, beginning with '60s -era Paramount and Warner Brothers production logos. He casts it with a veritable all-star roster of character actors (Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Phillip Baker Hall - hey, where's Jim Beaver?) and stars with the hearts of character actors (Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey, Jr.). He shocks us early with the violence of the Zodiac murders, and then pulls back into one of the most interesting takes on the procedural I've ever seen.

I walked into this movie thinking it would be, essentially, Jake Gyllenhaal and the Quest for the Zodiac. Fincher fools us into
believing that would be the case; but he takes long detours into the life of Inspector David Toschi (Ruffalo), a then-famous member of the SFPD who served as the models for both Bullitt and Dirty Harry; and shorter ones into the life of Paul Avery (Downey, turning in another in a long list of memorable performances). Gyllenhall's the obsessive, the guy who's fascinated by the Zodiac killings and just can't let it go, at the expense of his relationship with his wife and children. Toschi's the professional, the guy who does this for a living and, for all his notoriety, comes across as the most balanced individual in the entire enterprise. Downey, well, he's a shipwreck waiting for a shoal, and Zodiac provides that shoal as he lets his own
fascination with the case drag him down.

Most procedurals are about the details of hunting down a given criminal, normally culminating in a car chase or a shootout. This procedural is about those same details, but it's also about the nature of obsession. The main characters deal with it in different ways, and the film itself does a wonderful job letting us dip a vicarious toe into that whirlpool, ourselves. It works - by the third act, I was so thoroughly hooked that I lost track of my surroundings and nearly missed my Metro stop.

After seeing a string of kids' movies and foreign pictures, I was ready for a modern American drama. ZODIAC delivered.