Zodiac

Zodiac was everything it needed to be. A consistent mindfuck that consistently fucked with my mind (couldn’t describe it better than that). In all seriousness it was a fascinating, mystery-packed thriller that covered the unfolding of a case beginning 1968, which still puzzles people to this day. We’re brought on this journey with the San Francisco Police Department as well as the San Francisco Chronicle with a couple key individuals who followed the case solemnly. Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Robert Graysmith, was someone who obsessed over the Zodiac killer, eventually making it his life goal to find him. We explore his early admiration early in the movie, then we follow his progressive journey of finding the smallest leads and jumping at them, demonstrating his ambition but also his lack of experience doing ‘detective work’. Hence why he requires the aid of Mark Ruffalo’s character Dave Toschi, who is an inspector for the SFPD and front runner for the Zodiac case. They both make minimal effort to grasp at small leads, with Robert pushing forward these leads at any attempt to find something. This fundamentally explores Robert because it shows how desperate he is to find this man, (ruining his relationship with his family in the process) finally answering my question at the start of the movie; why is he so invested in this?  The story itself was extremely easy to become interested in because who doesn’t love movies that are ‘based on a true story’. It makes we want to go beyond the movie, learn about things that weren’t mentioned or were briefly discussed in the movie; your experience doesn’t end when the movie ends. Obviously the mass murders and harassment of people is very awful, it drives you even more to want the person responsible to get what they deserve - so the actual case and everything possibly linking to the Zodiac killer is the interesting part. In summary, the story goes beyond the movie (quite literally) and it provides an already star-studded cast with this story, making it a recipe for perfection. Overall, I loved my viewing of Zodiac so much to the extent that it took me nearly an hour to write this review, maybe 30 mins for the first sentence. When a movie makes you question every word you write in a review, you know it’s a marvel (speaking of marvel, the way my eyes lit up when I saw Mark and RDJ). Moreover, I also loved the subtle but meaningful aspects of this movie where characters use really good humour or interact excellently with others. Sometimes it could be Mark Ruffalo taking tomato out of his sandwich, (this happened guys I swear) it just brings the movie to life and the attention to detail almost acts as the Zodiac case, with many things to analyse beyond the case. I’m kind of sounding like Robert now so I guess I’ll stop nitpicking at things and get back to the point… My favourite aspect about Zodiac is the fact that (for me at least) it doesn’t stop here. My interest is already cemented, and not just in this specific case, but the detective/mystery genre as a whole. Don’t you just love media that intrigues you into exploring other media? It’s truly an amazing movie I can’t say enough about it, I have so many questions still unanswered. Fincher you absolute genius. As I said at the start, Zodiac was everything it needed to be. p.s. ‘You went to the library’