Engrossing. A sweeping scope of social convergence is magnified to the tune of Three Dog Night’s "Easy To Be Hard," which plays moments before the Zodiac killer’s July 4, 1969 silenced-gun attack on a young couple in a lover’s lane parking lot.
The violent event sets into motion director David Fincher’s methodical, and beautifully stylized adaptation of Robert Graysmith’s "first-person diaries" about the search for the notorious "Zodiac" serial killer that terrorized the Bay Area in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
With Alan Pakula’s "All the President’s Men" as his guiding beacon of contagious obsession, Fincher conducts the police procedural with a masterful economy that eloquently accumulates facts gathered by various police departments and by two members of the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial staff, toward a film of unfathomable precision.
Towering performances from Jake Gyllenhaal (as staff newspaper political cartoonist Robert Graysmith), and Mark Ruffalo (as famed homicide Inspector David Toschi), carry the film’s increasing sense of tension to its gratifying but uncertain conclusion. "Zodaic" is a masterpiece of the serial killer genre.
Rated R. 156 mins.
