The big question that hovers over this movie is not, Who's the Zodiac Killer? Nor is it, How did he elude capture? Nor, What ever became of him? None of the above. The big question is, Why does a movie about him have to be two hours and forty-five minutes long? Without a doubt, the movie has a subject of interest, the unsolved serial murders that gripped the Bay Area throughout the Seventies, and it has also an angle of interest, the differing degrees of obsession with the case on the part of a team of homicide detectives (Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, unsuitably lightweight and skittish, both), a substance-abusing crime reporter on the San Francisco Chronicle (Robert Downey, Jr., smirkingly typecast), and a moonlighting political cartoonist on the same paper (Jake Gyllenhaal, suitably lightweight), and it has finally, as the cherry on top, a person of interest, if you will, a demure Chloë Sevigny in the evolving role, over the years, of the cartoonist's blind date, steady girlfriend, wife, and ex-wife. (Neglect of Chloë Sevigny earns him top honors for obsession.) Nevertheless, two and three-quarters hours are a lot of time to spend on red tape, red herrings, dead ends. To be sure, the movie puts forth a theory as to the killer's identity, or rather, it puts forth the theory of the true-crime best-seller written by the aforesaid cartoonist, Robert Graysmith, who mouths a catch phrase which might well be the movie's own: "Just because you can't prove it, doesn't mean it's not true." David Fincher, the director previously of Seven and The Game and Fight Club and Panic Room, relishes a couple of the killings, as well as one near-miss, in a way that seems to violate the point of view of the movie; but he has thinned out his customary pea-soup atmospherics, and toned down his trendy stylistics, and gone very light on the period detail (a few pairs of sideburns here or there, not a squiggle of psychedelia nor a whiff of flower power), giving the case a creeping and creepy timelessness. These were wise choices. A movie this lengthy did not need to be any thicker. (2007) — Duncan Shepherd
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