I saw Zodiac last night on behalf of Chronicles. Warner Brothers kindly gave me an invite to a pre-screening in London. So, I guess I should write a review of some sort for you.
Firstly, I liked it and would recommend it, and though it probably won’t be the best film I see this year, it may make my Top 5 or Top 10, but then this does look like being a good year.
It isn’t science fiction, not even remotely, though there is a little about ciphers and codes. In fact, I would find it difficult to classify it into a genre. It is a crime/cop/ thriller, it is the ultimate cold case, but that is not the main story. The essential story is the obsession that takes hold of the investigators. One at a time, and to some more than others, two detectives, a newspaper crime reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle, and the newspaper’s cartoonist, become so involved with the hunt for the killer that it makes them overnight celebrities before it destroys them.
This isn’t a comedy, but there are also about 5 or 6 very well placed, and very funny jokes.
I won’t go into the plot in detail. It concerns a relentless serial killer who is stalking the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area, leaving citizens locked into a constant state of panic, and baffled authorities scrambling for clues. Though the killer sadistically mocks the detectives by leaving a series of perplexing ciphers and menacing letters, the investigation quickly stalls when none of the evidence yields any solid leads.
In the US this story seems known more widely than in the UK. I don’t think that is because of my age, I was around at the time and I don’t remember it being reported in the way that it would be today. I found that was an advantage to watching the film. Being a real story, it does not have a satisfactory ending, and if I had known the ending in advance it would have been less interesting. The killer has still not been brought to trial. There is strong circumstantial evidence that it was one of the main suspects who is now dead, but the case remains open in some of the police departments.
The police departments themselves participated in the making of the film because they hope that they might find some new evidence to finally lay the case to rest. Witnesses are old or have died now, and yet two of the ciphers have still never been decoded. It was two members of the public who deciphered the original cipher, something that neither the FBI, NSA and NCIS could not.
The film is too long at 2 hours and 38 minutes, but it is based on two books. I’m not sure how it could have been abridged. It doesn’t use everything from the books, but instead comes at it from the point of view of the four main investigators, especially the Robert Graysmith character. They could have missed out the finer details of the murders, but then there would be less reason for the audience to want to catch the killer, or to understand the obsession with the hunt.
There are four main characters:
Mark Ruffalo plays the ambitious Homicide Inspector David Toschi. Toschi became extremely well known and used as a template by Hollywood to model its super cops. He was the basis for Steve McQueen in Bullitt, for Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco and for Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry is even referenced in Zodiac when Toschi cannot stand to watch the film’s premier as the Scorpio killer’s cipher cannot be decoded. It was at the film premier that Toschi would first meet Graysmith. But they deliberately didn’t go out to make another Dirty Harry film here, and there is no Harry Calaghan that cleans up the city streets. Instead Toschi was put under investigation by Internal Affairs, charged with forging a later Zodiac letter and suffered a serious stomach ulcer.
Anthony Edwards plays Toschi’s low-key, meticulous partner Inspector William Armstrong. For him, the futility of the case leads him to leave. Both Armstrong and Toschi had had promising careers, Toschi being tipped for Chief of Police, but instead they were burnt out by this case. Since the case spanned many different police departments, some of them rural backwaters, they were forced to step on shoes to get results.
Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery, a seasoned and cynical star crime reporter. His obsession with the case leads him into heavy drinking and drug taking. He leaves the newspaper crippled by his addictions, and his life ends on an oxygen machine.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, the newspaper’s cartoonist, but with an interest in ciphers and puzzles. A is a shy, eagle scout, without Avery’s police connections, but with crucial insight that no one expected. He takes on the case when everyone else has left it for dead, but it destroys his marriage and family life in the process.
It is a period piece; it spans a wide period of time from 1969 to the 1990’s. I didn’t find any nitpicks, though the producers admit there are some to spot. I didn’t recognise the make of car driven by Graysmith, but I’ll buy one, since he drove it for at least 10 years! One thing I did read was that they killed two San Francisco Oak trees in the making of the film.
Firstly, I liked it and would recommend it, and though it probably won’t be the best film I see this year, it may make my Top 5 or Top 10, but then this does look like being a good year.
It isn’t science fiction, not even remotely, though there is a little about ciphers and codes. In fact, I would find it difficult to classify it into a genre. It is a crime/cop/ thriller, it is the ultimate cold case, but that is not the main story. The essential story is the obsession that takes hold of the investigators. One at a time, and to some more than others, two detectives, a newspaper crime reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle, and the newspaper’s cartoonist, become so involved with the hunt for the killer that it makes them overnight celebrities before it destroys them.
This isn’t a comedy, but there are also about 5 or 6 very well placed, and very funny jokes.
I won’t go into the plot in detail. It concerns a relentless serial killer who is stalking the streets of the San Francisco Bay Area, leaving citizens locked into a constant state of panic, and baffled authorities scrambling for clues. Though the killer sadistically mocks the detectives by leaving a series of perplexing ciphers and menacing letters, the investigation quickly stalls when none of the evidence yields any solid leads.
In the US this story seems known more widely than in the UK. I don’t think that is because of my age, I was around at the time and I don’t remember it being reported in the way that it would be today. I found that was an advantage to watching the film. Being a real story, it does not have a satisfactory ending, and if I had known the ending in advance it would have been less interesting. The killer has still not been brought to trial. There is strong circumstantial evidence that it was one of the main suspects who is now dead, but the case remains open in some of the police departments.
The police departments themselves participated in the making of the film because they hope that they might find some new evidence to finally lay the case to rest. Witnesses are old or have died now, and yet two of the ciphers have still never been decoded. It was two members of the public who deciphered the original cipher, something that neither the FBI, NSA and NCIS could not.
The film is too long at 2 hours and 38 minutes, but it is based on two books. I’m not sure how it could have been abridged. It doesn’t use everything from the books, but instead comes at it from the point of view of the four main investigators, especially the Robert Graysmith character. They could have missed out the finer details of the murders, but then there would be less reason for the audience to want to catch the killer, or to understand the obsession with the hunt.
There are four main characters:
Mark Ruffalo plays the ambitious Homicide Inspector David Toschi. Toschi became extremely well known and used as a template by Hollywood to model its super cops. He was the basis for Steve McQueen in Bullitt, for Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco and for Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Dirty Harry is even referenced in Zodiac when Toschi cannot stand to watch the film’s premier as the Scorpio killer’s cipher cannot be decoded. It was at the film premier that Toschi would first meet Graysmith. But they deliberately didn’t go out to make another Dirty Harry film here, and there is no Harry Calaghan that cleans up the city streets. Instead Toschi was put under investigation by Internal Affairs, charged with forging a later Zodiac letter and suffered a serious stomach ulcer.
Anthony Edwards plays Toschi’s low-key, meticulous partner Inspector William Armstrong. For him, the futility of the case leads him to leave. Both Armstrong and Toschi had had promising careers, Toschi being tipped for Chief of Police, but instead they were burnt out by this case. Since the case spanned many different police departments, some of them rural backwaters, they were forced to step on shoes to get results.
Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery, a seasoned and cynical star crime reporter. His obsession with the case leads him into heavy drinking and drug taking. He leaves the newspaper crippled by his addictions, and his life ends on an oxygen machine.
Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, the newspaper’s cartoonist, but with an interest in ciphers and puzzles. A is a shy, eagle scout, without Avery’s police connections, but with crucial insight that no one expected. He takes on the case when everyone else has left it for dead, but it destroys his marriage and family life in the process.
It is a period piece; it spans a wide period of time from 1969 to the 1990’s. I didn’t find any nitpicks, though the producers admit there are some to spot. I didn’t recognise the make of car driven by Graysmith, but I’ll buy one, since he drove it for at least 10 years! One thing I did read was that they killed two San Francisco Oak trees in the making of the film.
