"Zodiac": Unfocused, but almost brilliant.

Zodiac
(David Fincher, 2007)

3 stars

An air of uncertainty permeates every scene in “Zodiac.” David Fincher’s film is based on a true story about a serial killer called the Zodiac, who operated in Northern California between 1968 and 1971. During that time, he killed five people (although some say more) while taunting newspapers and police investigators with more than a dozen letters and coded ciphers that always began with the words, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” Then suddenly, he vanished. The police spent years on the case, following every lead, interviewing every suspect, but in the end, no one was ever caught. The case remains open to this day.

“Zodiac” takes this story and turns it into a procedural in the vein of “All the President’s Men.” But there’s a huge difference – “All the President’s Men” had an ending. Nixon was guilty, so everything got wrapped up neat and tidy. “Zodiac” doesn’t have this luxury. Because the killer was never caught, the story doesn’t have an ending. And if you don’t know where you’re going, how do you know how to get there?

You’ve seen the first fifteen minutes of “Law and Order,” when they don’t know who they’re looking for and keep running into dead ends? Stretch it out to two-and-a-half hours, and you get “Zodiac.” It’s the only procedural I’ve seen that spends just as much time on the false leads as it does on the real ones (which, of course, could easily be false leads). There’s a scene, about halfway through the movie, where a young mother and her baby become stranded on the side of the road. A man pulls up beside her and offers her a lift to the nearest service station. Even though she’s nervous, she gets in. They drive for miles without seeing anything until eventually, a service station appears in the distance. But instead of slowing down, the man drives right past it. By now, the woman is extremely nervous; she holds her baby tightly. “I think you missed it,” she says. “It was closed,” he replies. There’s a long pause. “Before I kill you, I’m going to throw your baby out the window.”

The next time we see her, she’s crying hysterically on the side of the road.

Whether or not this kidnapper was Zodiac has been debated over and over and over again. The woman thinks so, and Zodiac himself claimed responsibility in a letter he sent the police over four months later. But the letter is so vague (not to mention incredibly late), that many, many people believe that he was just trying to take credit for someone else’s crime; he could have written it after reading a newspaper article for all we know. But it’s included here because it might be valid.

This is true of almost every scene in the movie. Everything is included. Everything. There’s a scene where Zodiac calls into a TV talk show, except that it isn’t Zodiac at all, but someone pretending to be him. A scene where a reporter uncovers evidence of a 1963 murder that may or may not have been Zodiac’s first killing. A scene where a newspaper cartoonist discovers a series of handwritten movie posters with writing that a handwriting expert assures him is as close to match as he’s ever seen – only to learn that the suspect didn’t draw the posters. Fincher can’t cut the superfluous – as far as he knows, everything is superfluous. The real leads could easily be red herrings and the best evidence could be hiding right under his nose. How can he know? All he can do is include as many of the facts as possible, point out the problems with the conclusions and hope for the best.

As you can probably tell, “Zodiac” is pretty unfocused. That’s why it works. It gives the movie a sort of start-and-stop momentum, alternating exhilaration over finding clues with frustration and tedium when those clues turn out to be red herrings. It's the kind of movie that sends you running through a dark tunnel, only to slam you into a brick wall when you come out the other side.

Just like the Zodiac.