Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

 VIDEO watch

following leads Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) crosses Toschi’s (Mark Ruffalo) path

Zodiac (2007)

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Chloe Sevigny, Anthony Edwards

Director: David Fincher

Screenwriter: James Vanderbilt (From a book by Robert Graysmith)

Composer: David Shire

Cinematographer: Angus Wall

David Fincher abjures the depravity and graphic violence of his earlier movies (“Fight Club” and “Se7en”) and goes in for a spare, toned-down style. The film is based on the true story of a serial killer, who called himself Zo diac and terrorised the public and taunted the police in San Francisco’s Bay Area in the Sixties and Seventies.

For a movie on a serial killer with all the hyperbole of Jack the Ripper, Fincher creates a masterpiece of palpable dread and tension without resorting to any gimmicks or cheap thrills. As Fincher explains in the marvellously detailed making-of featurette, the idea of “Zodiac” was not to show blood, guts and gore, but rather to show how crime affects everyone — from the victims’ families and the suspects to people involved in solving the case.

A common enough theme in crime thrillers, “Zodiac” reveals how the killer becomes an obsession with three men — the policeman assigned to case, a journalist who looks at the murders as an opportunity for advancement and a cartoonist who is drawn to the case. This police-procedural-meets-newspaper-movie does not offer a neat Hollywood-style tying of loose ends. The leads and clues are presented to the audience who has to then work out who the Zodiac is. The fact that this case was never solved gives an extra frisson of suspense.

The film opens with the first of the Zodiac’s recorded killings, a young couple on lover’s lane. The scene shifts to the hurly-burly of a newspaper office, The San Francisco Chronicle, where a cipher arrives from a person who calls himself Zodiac claiming responsibility for the killings and demanding the cipher be published or else he would kill more people. As the question of whether to give into Zodiac’s demands is being debated, the cipher attracts two very different people — the eccentric and ambitious journalist, Paul Avery, and an earnest former boy scout, the newspaper cartoonist, Robert Graysmith, with a penchant for solving puzzles.

As the killings continue with the boastful, threatening letters to the police and the press, San Francisco is gripped by a wave of panic and paranoia.

The police with Inspectors Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong work round the clock, following slender leads and half-guesses. They also have to sift through the tidal wave of evidence coming from the concerned public.

The movie follows the three men through their triumphs and despairs. Avery, the only person to be threatened by Zodiac, goes rapidly downhill ending up wasted by too much alcohol and substance abuse.

Inspector Armstrong asks to shifted out of the case while Toschi faces an internal affairs investigation. Graysmith doggedly pursues the case and writes a book (which the film is based on) on his findings but not before breaking up his family thanks to his obsession.

The movie at two and a half hours is taut and the tension never flags, thanks in equal measure to Fincher’s mastery, the brilliant acting, the fine attention to detail and the extraordinary cinematography. A shot were a newspaper plate turns to function as a wall is just one example of the mind-altering camerawork.

The attention to detail is awesome as San Francisco of the time is brought alive. Apparently Dave Toschi was the inspiration for “Bullitt” the 1968 movie which starred Mr. Cool, Steve McQueen as a San Francisco cop. There is even a dialogue between Avery and Graysmith where Graysmith comments on Toschi wearing his gun like Bullitt and Avery saying Toschi is the inspiration for “Bullitt!”

The cast is phenomenal — from Jake Gyllenhaal with his large, dark eyes as Graysmith to Mark Ruffalo as the bluff Toschi complete with a colourful wardrobe. And what a phenomenal actor Robert Downey Jr. is! He becomes Paul Avery—from the swagger to the wry humour, he has got everything spot on.

As extras, there is only the making-of featurette with interviews with the cast and Fincher apart from Graysmith and Toschi. “Zodiac” is a must watch for all who love an atmospheric thriller.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail