2007 brought some delightful films - 300, Spider-Man 3, even, and I cringe to say it, but, Shrek The Third (which, to my surprise, grossed $784,412,359 worldwide; about $624,412,359 over the budget they spent to make it) - none of which really enthralled me as deeply as Director David Fincher's Zodiac was able to. The movie literally had me biting my hand like my boyfriend's pessimistic Italian grandmother and wiggling underneath my bed covers. "I know who the killer is! I know who it is! I should have been there to catch him, the case would have been solved by now!!" That's what I screamed four or more times in my head throughout the movie.
I was so wrong. The players were so believable that I wasn't able to see how misleading some of the clues were; just as the detectives did, I followed certain clues without thoroughly questioning "Why"or "How."
The movie's cast was chosen perfectly: Jake Gyllenhaal, who has a short repertoire for an A-List actor (Jarhead, Brokeback Mountain, Donnie Darko), played the lead role, Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle in the late 60s and 70s, who in the end was the only person willing and determined enough to crack the code and discover the identity of the true Zodiac killer. This determination, however, became an obsession, subsequently destroying his marriage and his career as an illustrator. Gyllenhaal was able to evoke an understanding out of audience members, which allowed them to feel Graysmith's pain and his desire to solve the murders once and for all by writing a book of all the information collected from October 30, 1966 (the date of the first murder linked back to the Zodiac killer), to its being published in 1986. The audience was there, solving it with him step by step (only about 32 years later).
Mark Ruffalo, probably best known for his roles in 13 Going On 30 (2004) and All the King's Men (2006), played Inspector David Toschi of the San Fransisco Police, whom he looks just like in the film with his bow tie and curly dark hair and sideburns. His performance was admirable and sincere - he wanted to find the murderer so badly, you could see how much it pained him to let a man kill 37 innocent people (so he claimed in his letters; only 5 were officially known as Zodiac murders). He saw what the case did to his partner, and he fought against letting it get to him the same way.
Toschi's partner, Inspector William Armstrong, was played by Anthony Edwards, best known as Dr. Mark Greene from 1994-2002 on TNT's hit drama ER. His character isn't developed much in the film, but you are able to see how the case eventually breaks him down when he transfers out of Homicide because he could no longer handle "being on-call."
The film also starred Robert Downey Jr. as Chronicle reporter Paul Avery; a hot-headed, ill-mannered writer whose superiority complex drove him from the Chronicle to the Sacramento Bee, and finally, the San Francisco Examiner until he retired. Downey's character's life seemed to mirror that of his own (in former and even recent years), consumed by alcohol, depression, and severe social humiliation. I can't say I was impressed at his acting because he may not have been acting at all; then again, I fell in love with Downey in 1994's Only You when I was seven years old, so I can't hate him, either.
Zodiac also starred Brian Cox as Melvin Belli, the only man whom the Zodiac killer officially contacted for help from his "sickness" (is that what murder is?); Chloe Sevigny as Graysmith's blind date/wife/ex-wife; and John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Leigh Allen, the man believed to-date to be the true Zodiac killer as revealed in Graysmith's books, Zodiac, and Zodiac: The Identity of America's Most Elusive Serial Killer Revealed.
An interesting sidenote about the cast is that Gyllenhaal, Downey, Ruffalo and Lynch all bear striking resemblances to their real-life counterparts, Graysmith, Avery, Toschi and Allen, consecutively.
The movie was a great psychological thriller that left me with the most obvious question unanswered (who styled Ruffalo's hair?), but also with many affirmations: Gyllenhaal has got it all; Downey brings his work home; and cartoonists can solve crimes better than trained detectives and entire police forces compiled from 4 major U.S. cities.
Seriously, though, this movie sheds light on the hardships of the people involved, not only through the victims' and families' eyes, but also through the men and women who dedicate their lives to rescuing, protecting, and helping us. As a society, we let things go very easily, whereas these people are consumed by those same things. Maybe someday the case will be revamped and new technology will allow us to know absolutely that Allen is the killer; since he died August 26, 1992 of natural causes, we will never get his confession.
The movie's tagline:
"There's more than one way to lose your life to a killer."
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