In the summer of 1969, the editorial offices of three local newspapers (the "Chronicle", the "San Francisco Examiner" and the "Vallejo Time-Herald") received a letter from a man who confessed to having committed two murders in the previous months, murders that, moreover, had not been connected to each other. The killer signed "Zodiac" and announced that, if his letters were not published on the front page, he would kill again very soon; moreover, he attached an encrypted page containing important information about his identity. From that moment on, Zodiac kills again, continuing to send clues to the police and newspaper editorial offices. Inspectors Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong will track him down, as will the Chronicle reporter, Paul Avery, and his colleague, the cartoonist and code expert, Robert Graysmith. The killer's threat will rage over the San Francisco Bay until 1974, the date on which he will stop all contact with the press.
"Obsession" is the keyword to identify David Fincher's cinema. The talented American director has now made the obsessive theme his trademark, applying the obsession itself to his working method. Now famous in the industry for his meticulousness and meticulousness (before shooting "Zodiac" he documented himself for 18 months, analyzing old police files and interviewing survivors of the events), Fincher has managed to center the entire "Alien 3" on the obsession of a almost invisible malevolent presence, has accentuated the obsessive character of the protagonist of "Seven" towards the investigations on the killer he was chasing, has narrated a particular parable on paranoia with "The Game" and has masterfully described the schizophrenic obsession of a perfect Mr. Nobody in "Fight Club".
"Zodiac" is probably closest, both in genre and argument, to "Seven" and in this case too we can witness the obsession that arises in four simple men towards the search for a phantom killer, an obsession that reaches its extreme expansion in the character of Robert Graysmith, who will dedicate his entire life to the discovery of the killer's identity.
And it is precisely to the two novels by Graysmith ("Zodiac" and "Zodiac Unmasked") that Fincher will draw inspiration for the creation of his thriller, giving Graysmith himself (played by the former Donnie Darko Jake Gyllenhaal) the role of protagonist of the story.
"Zodiac", in competition at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, tells the story of the serial killer who terrorized San Francisco in the '60s and '70s as if it were a report: a quasi-documentary reconstruction of the events, captions on the place and time of the events always present at every scene change... in short, a thriller almost unique in its genre, capable of fascinating and, at the same time, alienating the viewer.
The most evident limitation of the film is, however, its excessive length (2 hours and 38 minutes) which inevitably pushes it to show some avoidable lengthiness and capable, in some cases, of significantly diminishing the narrative tension of the film. In fact, some passages, especially in the second half of the film, turn out to be rather slow and excessively verbose, certainly not suitable for the fluidity to which we have been accustomed by modern American thrillers; and think that the initial cut of the film included a duration that exceeded 3 hours, then shortened after the discontent shown by the public in the preview screenings.
Fincher once again proves his mastery behind the camera; the virtuosity that distinguished "Panic Room" has disappeared to make way for a more classic style of direction that uses, however, a series of excellent visual solutions:
from the long panoramic view from above that follows the taxi transporting the killer, to the virtual rooms built by words, up to the accelerated construction of the skyscraper that stands to materialize the passage of time.
The cast is also noteworthy. Alongside the aforementioned Gyllehaal, there are a very good Robert Downey Jr., in the role of the chronicler Avary, and an equally good Mark Ruffalo, in the role of Inspector Toschi.
Beyond the label of thriller tout court, "Zodiac" manages to touch two points that are often not typical of the genre; on the one hand we have an approach to horror thanks to two scenes that will hardly be forgotten by the viewer, namely the scene of the ruthless execution of the couple at the lake and the scene in which Graysmith finds himself face to face with one of the suspects inside a dark cellar. The other value of which the film manages to cover itself is a not indifferent sociological attention that demonstrates the enormous power that the media have on human life, in the 1970s as well as now: not surprisingly Zodiac chooses publishing to spread his mad plan, aware that the "fourth power" can influence the individual citizen and turn him into a real star (the apex of his mythologization is in the scene in which the protagonists go to the cinema to see "Dirty Harry", a film of those years inspired precisely by the Zodiac killer).
Furthermore, the killer proved to be particularly fascinated (not to mention inspired) by the world of cinema, since in the letters sent to the newspapers he explicitly cited a phrase taken from "The Most Dangerous Game", a 1932 film directed by Ernest B. Shoedsack, from which he also took his disguise.
In short, "Zodiac" is a remarkable film, far from Fincher's "Seven" or "Fight Club", which remain his best works, but still worth noting. It would certainly have gained points if made more fluid by a shorter duration.
Curiosity. The case of Zodiac has inspired more sectors of the cultural industry, providing material for comics, novels, songs ("Body thief" by Faster Pussycat) and cinema (in addition to the aforementioned "Dirty Harry" by Don Siegel, "Bullit", with Steve McQueen, was inspired by the figure of Inspector Dave Toschi, and "The Exorcist 3" drew inspiration from Zodiac for the figure of the Gemini killer).
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