Zodiac (2007)

“Just because you can’t prove it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. ” – Robert Graysmith

Number of Times Seen – 2 (Dec 2008 and 17 Nov 2017)

Brief Synopsis – In San Francisco in the 1970′, a newspaper cartoonist tries to piece together the vast evidence while trying to discover the true identity of the Zodiac Killer.

My Take on it – I can’t, for the life of me, understand how I was bored the first time I watched this film.

I have avoided watching it for years due to an incorrect perception that the story os drawn out too much and comes across as a complete bore-fest.

A few friends have tried to get me to give it another try over the past few years and none were successful in having me even give it another chance.

I finally decided tho to take the plunge and was awe-struck at how amazing this film was.

This film will now have an honored place quite high on my favorite films from 2007 and might even grab the top spot when I reevaluate the list at the end of this month.

This is a long film yet Director David Fincher is able to keep things so interesting, intriguing and fascinating the whole time.

This is largely due to the great pacing of the film but I actually believe that one of this films major draws is the way it used the characters.

This film is filled with lots of famous and familiar actors and none really seem to be able to take the lead and the reason for that is that the lead character of this story is the killer himself and despite the fact that he remains anonymous, the rest of the character’s arcs are driven solely by his presence and crimes.

This actually allows the story to jump between characters with ease and focus on different people at different points of the timeline.

The transitions between these character’s involvement also is done near perfectly and we can feel the fluid transitions as they happen and t doesn’t affect the storytelling at all.

Fincher also does a wonderful job keeping the story intelligible and understandable even when the story seems to get a bit more complex.The storyline takes place over more than a decade , so the lack of lead role actually helps it work due to the fast pacing of it all.

The dialogue between the characters is fascinating to watch since most of the characters are quite intelligent and this helps remind us that this is based on a true story and was written to have the characters all interact so well while they try to put together the puzzle of who this murderer really was.

Bottom Line – Fascinating film that despite its length manages to keep things interesting and intriguing the whole time. Loved the way that the amazing cast works perfectly and allows the storyline to move fluidly from character to character without us feeling slighted.  The story gets quite complex at certain points, but Fincher manages to keep the viewer informed the entire time as to what has transpired.  The fact that this story takes place over more than a decade isn’t felt because the pacing of the story is so great.  The dialogue between the characters is so much fun to watch because the characters are all quite intelligent which helps with the believablity of this extremely interesting story. Highly Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – The shooting script was two hundred pages long. To prevent any problems with length, that such a long script might cause, Director David Fincher decided to ask his cast members to speak faster.(From IMDB)

Rating – Oscar Worthy

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