Letters from a killer

Directed by David Fincher -“ any movie with that name in the credits is sure to cause excited anticipation among many moviegoers. In Zodiac, the director of Alien 3, Se7en, The Game, Fight Club and The Panic Room tackles the hunt for the Zodiac Killer, an actual serial killer who terrorised San Francisco in the late 70s and early 80s but was never captured.

Ironically, Zodiac doesn’t much resemble the serial killer genre -“ it’s not even really a thriller, though it has its tense moments. Considering it’s a 158-minute movie, the violence is sparse, mostly near the beginning. There are only a few murder sequences, the second one particularly grisly and hard to watch, but Fincher doesn’t seem very interested in the details -“ he takes a long time to reveal some of the victims survived the attacks.

The movie centres mainly on four men who became so obsessed with the case that it ruined their lives: two SFPD Homicide detectives, Dave Toschi and William Armstrong (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards), the San Francisco Chronicle‘s ace crime reporter, Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr), and his unlikely colleague, the Chronicle‘s editorial cartoonist, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). Graysmith wrote the two non-fiction books that were the basis for Zodiac‘s script.

Fincher had a personal interest in the story. Zodiac was the first serial killer to create a media frenzy. He achieved this by writing a series of taunting letters to members of the media and the police -“ Graysmith was present at an editorial meeting where the first letter was delivered to the Chronicle. Fincher was seven years old and living in the area when one of the letters was published with threats to attack school buses and kill the children. The case led to changes in media attitudes towards the public interest, and also to changes in police methods. Killings occurred in various police jurisdictions and investigations were hampered by the red tape involved in getting them to share information.

Zodiac is also a portrait of a fascinating era, depicted in scrupulous detail and accompanied by music of the period. The opening song, Three Dog Night’s gorgeous version of Easy To Be Hard from the ultimate hippy musical, Hair, eases us into the first murder, after which Donovan’s Hurdy Gurdy Man will never sound the same again. It’s a long, engrossing movie and the huge cast rises to the occasion. Robert Downey Jr has the flashiest role, but Gyllenhaal is more impressive than ever, along with Chlo?evigny (pictured with Gyllenhaal) in the small role as his wife.

And don’t assume the unsolved nature of the case will result in anticlimax. Fincher immersed himself in Graysmith’s investigation and, because the story is seen through the latter’s eyes, it supports a pretty convincing theory about who the killer was and what happened to him. This is a significant change of direction for Fincher’s career -“ his passion for the project is palpable and the result is a very satisfying movie.