Director David Fincher’s “Zodiac” isn’t the first movie based on the series of murders that terrorized the San Francisco area in the late 1960s and throughout the ’70s. Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry,” released in 1971, when paranoia about the killings was still rampant, and the city’s wounds were still raw, has that claim. But where Eastwood’s Harry Callahan grimly blasts his way though the streets of San Fran with his .44 Magnum until he blows a hole the size of Alcatraz in the bad guy, Fincher shows the investigation for what it was: a long, agonizing and ultimately fruitless endeavor. And he makes it work.
In this age of “Saw,” “Hostel” and other torturous fare, “Zodiac” isn’t what you’d expect, especially considering it comes from Fincher, who directed the wickedly stylized “Se7en” and “Fight Club.” Fincher sticks to the facts as they’re laid out in the two Zodiac-themed books by Robert Graysmith, an editorial cartoonist with the San Francisco Chronicle during the time of the murders, and the facts are enough. Fincher guides this story more than he drives it, making sure the relevant details come forth while the unimportant minutiae fade to the background.
It’s a simple story, made complex by the elusiveness of the killer, who enjoys goading the police and scaring the public with freaky letters to the editor that he sends to area newspapers. The media, headed by Paul Avery (Robert Downey, Jr., drinking and drugging it up like, well, Robert Downey, Jr.), the Chronicle’s crime reporter at the time, and Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), engage in a tug-of-war over the case with the police. The newspapers want everything on the front page – if it bleeds, it leads – while the police call for restraint.
The detectives who are leading the San Francisco case, David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony “Goose” Edwards, with hair), make little headway over the years, investigating hundreds of leads (while dismissing thousands of bogus ones). This is not CSI: Bay Area. There is no “Aha!” moment, no guns-blasting chase sequence; the investigation is merely a decade of fascinating frustration. Creepy bad guys are investigated, but there is never enough definitive evidence to even make an arrest. Eventually, the police move on.
Yes, the story is about the Zodiac killer’s depravity and guile, the media’s fascination with the murders and the ultimate futility of the investigation, but it is the characters’ reactions to the investigation that make this film so compelling. As Avery slowly fades to oblivion, living on a boat and at the bottom of a bottle of gin, Graysmith’s obsession takes him deeper into the depths of the Zodiac’s world. So deep, in fact, that he begins receiving foreboding phone calls in the middle of the night with the man on the other end of the line breathing heavily, saying nothing. At one point, he investigates a lead at the house of a suspect’s friend, a man who could believably be a serial killer even if he isn’t the Zodiac. When Graysmith follows the man into his basement, a female moviegoer pleaded openly (and loudly) with Graysmith to leave. Fincher makes this palatable, heart-pounding tension so real, so menacing, he doesn’t even need a Nine Inch Nails song in the background to help it along.
The murders were never officially solved – some of the investigations remain open to this day, in fact – but the film offers a wink and a nod to the real Graysmith’s idea of who the killer actually was. The conclusion is subtle – no JFK grassy knoll here – but satisfying.
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