Outtakes

ZODIAC (R) Nobody does serial killer movies like David Fincher, and Fincher's Zodiac is a serial killer movie unlike any other — including his own. Eschewing the dank, velvety atmospherics and formidable stylistic flourishes of the director's own esteemed Seven (and most of his other previous work), Fincher fashions Zodiac in a surprisingly straightforward and frill-less manner, evoking the look and feel of a 1970s time frame without slavishly fetishizing it. Even more crucially, Fincher subverts our expectations of where the meat of the movie should lie, giving us a film where the thrill of the chase takes a back seat to red tape and blind alleys. There's a lot of cross-chatter and seemingly pointless tail-chasing here, but that in fact becomes crucial to what the film's all about. A police procedural distilled to its cold, bureaucratic essence, Zodiac immerses us in a process that's more nerve-wracking nuts and bolts than car chases and titillating madmen, ultimately positioning the movie much closer to something like All the President's Men than Silence of the Lambs. The periodic murder sequences pack an undeniable wallop, but the vast majority of Zodiac plays out in the cluttered newsrooms and drab offices where loosely connected groups of curiously faceless journalists and cops endlessly debate the details driving their case. With no real heroes (the focus rarely settles too long on any one individual) and a villain who's more of a MacGuffin than a palpable personality, Zodiac is easily the most perverse mainstream entertainment in ages. In the end, virtually every one of its obsessed good guys winds up down for the count, drowning in the same ocean of frustration that did in Gene Hackman in The Conversation. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards and Brian Cox. 3.5 stars