FREE ON CINEGEEK.De David Fincher - Zodiac
This is the biggest of all serial killer movies! The Opus Magnum of the genre! Not only is the movie based on the murders of the Zodiac Killer; it even spreads the same feeling! The Zodiac Killer, that was a case that stank! One who provoked people! Never could you catch the killer, so many resolutions and feints he laid. In the end, it was a cartoonist who was stubborn enough to assemble the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and put together a man who was MANY guilty. Zodiac combines the motifs of the cop thriller with those of the journalist thriller, but fortunately is free of clichés of both genres. He leads us deep into a labyrinth of facts and suspicions until our blood freezes. Somehow director David Fincher and his screenwriter James Vanderbilt have managed to find their way through this darkness. So many characters are summoned that we are no different than the eyewitnesses in the case: we remember faces we once saw. Zodiac opens with a sudden and extremely brutal murder. More will follow. In five cases, the police are certain that they were committed by the Zodiac Killer, but other murders also bear his signature. However, Zodiac is not one of those movies that resemble a single bloody path. All murders are committed at the beginning. Then the killer writes his cryptic letters to various newspapers, which in turn have to be translated by journalists and the police. David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards) are the two cops. Toschi works according to the textbook, because he believes in the textbook. Armstrong, on the other hand, trusts his instinct. Next to that he appears: The journalist Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr as the epitome of the chain-smoking reporter) and the cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). They all really existed. And in fact, it must have been that journalists at their desks opened the bottle of schnapps and smoked and smoked and smoked. We expect journalists who solve a murder to do the same! Graysmith, whose book the film is based on, is still new to his editorial staff. He looks like the new guy in his class. It's Graysmith who is obsessively working on the case, even as interest in the Zodiac Killer begins to decline. Zodiac seems extremely authentic and this is due to the chases and gunfire. The police work is precisely recreated - and that's what makes a good cop thriller. Graysmith is an unarmed civilian and this is the suspense of Zodiac: "We worry about him and we have to! Graysmith is naive and can't assess risks. David Fincher follows him and gives him room. In general, he takes his time. He doesn't show nine shots where even one reaches. Zodiac seems like a protest against modernity. A classic that also looks like one! Fincher has understood that the real crime doesn't belong to the same genre as "Crime Action".