Zodiac

Just went to the movies with K for the first time in a while (the last movies we saw in the theater were a double feature of Oscar winners The Last King of Scotland and Pan’s Labyrinth at the little independent movie theater in Rhinebeck, about 30 minutes north of here. We’d heard some good things about Zodiac (starring Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, and the newly by-me appreciated Robert Downey, Jr.), including an A from Entertainment Weekly, of which K is an avid reader and subscriber. So we trucked off to Regal (I got free popcorn — thank you Regal Crown Club!) and sat down for a good-’ol-fashioned thriller flick.

In that regard, it definitely didn’t disappoint. There is nary a thriller movie which actually makes me nervous and squirm around in my seat, but at times, Zodiac did just that. It was probably too long by half, but a lot of director David Fincher’s work is on the long side. It’s a fascinating story, and one with a lot of twists and turns, and down and dirty police work. It’s no L.A. Confidential when it comes to those aforementioned twists and turns, but it does the job nicely.

Gyllenhall is hyped as the lead actor, but he really only becomes such later on in the film. In fact, as K said as we were leaving the theater after I remarked that it was too long, it really seemed like two separate movies. One, during the early days of the Zodiac killer’s reign, while he was still presumably murdering people and sending letters and ciphers to the San Francisco Chronicle, and the other, after Zodiac had gone into hiding/seclusion for a few years. Ruffalo and Gyllenhall probably have the most screen time, with Gyllenhall picking up most of his in the second half of the movie, when Robert Graysmith is really becoming obsessed with writing his book and finding out who Zodiac really was.

The last thing about this movie really worth mentioning is that it was a “That Guy” hall of famer hall-of-fame movie. A “That Guy” hall of famer (thanks to Bill Simmons for the term) is an actor that, whenever you see him/her on screen, prompts you to yell “Oh, it’s that guy!” Well, this movie had so many parts like that, it was insane. You had Dermot Mulroney, Donal Logue, Philip Baker Hall, John Mahoney (who I missed the first time), Zach Grenier,…heck, it had Anthony Edwards!!! What has he done lately (oh that’s right, basically nothing since ER)?!?!? At one point I thought “hell, why didn’t they just cut the crap and cast William H. Macy?” — Macy being a charter member of the “That Guy” HOF.

All in all, Zodiac was definitely enjoyable, but you have to know what you’re getting into. The movie’s about two and a half hours long, and can drag towards the end. If you have trouble following complicated stories with lots of characters, it might be better to wait until the DVD release. However, in the end it’s a good flick and most certainly worth seeing no matter what.