Sunday, March 4, 2007

Zodiac (Fincher)

I have to preface this by saying that I have a thing for Zodiac. I wrote a paper on him years ago and since then I've been fascinated by his case. The basis for that paper was Graysmith's book, which was also the basis for the screenplay.
That said, I enjoyed the film. The case was a clusterfuck as it was going on, which they do a good job of showing. There are a lot of "two days later" messages which I usually feel interrupts the flow of movies, but I think it was necessary here to show just how drawn out this thing was. It spans decades, without those messages it would have seemed that everything happened relatively close in time.
They make a clear case for who they think is the killer, but the case was never solved so the movie couldn't officially be resolved. Lacking a typical movie ending, they were forced to go in another direction - the lives of those working on the case. It was interesting to see how the case affected those working on it. You could argue that Avery was an addict prior to the case, but it's clear that the others had their lives torn apart. I think that was the point of the film.

My theater companion did not have such a glowing review. He thought it seemed to drag on with no real payoff. I say that's the point of the movie, but I can see how that would bother someone who didn't have previous knowledge of the case.

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