We all know that the perceived gender divide which holds that all women will drippily trot along to the latest Sarah Jessica Parker flop exists largely in the tiny minds of Hollywood marketeers. Still, if we are to hypothesise around the perfect male film, Zodiac might well fit the bill. Combining the compelling pedantry of Michael Mann at his most technical and a screenplay that barely accommodates a token female (Sevigny), David Fincher’s True Life Crime drama is a boy’s club to rival the most revolting golf courses.
Happily, that does not preclude the possibility of an appreciative female audience. If anything, the presence of Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. will ensure that all the girliest girls are seated front row centre.
These three gents play obsessed investigators on the trail of the ‘Zodiac’, a serial killer who terrorised the San Francisco area during the late ‘60s. Though he taunted police and news-desk jockeys with notes and ciphers, the Zodiac was never apprehended, paving the way for bizarre theories involving Charles Manson, quantrants and radian angles.
Mr. Fincher’s sixth feature, adapted from two bullet stopping tomes by Robert Graysmith (here essayed by Mr. Gyllenhaal), is not remotely concerned with these more colourful accounts. Nor does the director come any closer to the truth than most of the devoted on-line sleuths who can still be found exchanging information and clues in dark corners of the internet.
Meticulous, ominous and very, very brown, Zodiac instead depicts a procedurally driven infatuation that leaves the primary characters damaged or jonesing for more. Downey Jr. is a liquored up, coke-addled reporter driven demented by the case. Ruffalo, a decent-minded cop, becomes a jaded wreck before our very eyes. Only Gyllenhaal, a newspaper cartoonist turned amateur detective, seems to possess an unhealthy enough personality traits to carry him through to the bitter end.
Except that there is no bitter end. There is only frustration and doubt. Fincher cannot provide us with closure or such niceties as character development and narrative progression. By definition, Zodiac has nowhere to go.
This may account for the film’s at the US box-office, but don’t let it deter you. Like The Most Dangerous Game, a movie that’s referenced repeatedly by the script, Zodiac is all about the thrill of the chase, not the taste of the kill. It’s a beautifully crafted mediation on ponerology that harks back to Se7en and reminds us why we swooned for Fincher in the first place.