Is it time to reevaluate David Fincher? However many times I‘ve returned to Se7en and been struck by its undeniable power I’ve merely enjoyed Panic Room, and The Game. Only Fight Club seemed to flower with full promise of Fincher’s potential. But just as I was getting ready to start putting his films on the “I’ll get to it when I can list” along comes this stunningly different take on the police procedural. At two hours and forty minutes one expects Fincher to over rely on his trademark camerawork to maintain the pacing but though Fincher has actually emerged as a technician who makes highly enjoyable, even complex films it isn’t until Zodiac that we’ve seen him move beyond set pieces into a complex narrative structure built primarily on character development. Unlike Panic Room and The Game I never felt myself lifted out of the story of Zodiac.

The film chronicles the lengthy and exhausting search for the Zodiac killer who plagued the West Cost in the seventies. As in police procedurals we watch the detrimental effect the case has on the people who allow themselves to be drawn into its black hole and are left wondering if the cost is somehow too great. This is compelling human stuff especially in the hands of Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal and the rest of cast who take on the roles of reporters, police officers, city officials and the prime suspects. Chloë Sevigny has a role as the long suffering wife and the greatly underused Charles Fleischer makes the most of a scene in which he plays a creepy possibly criminal projectionist. Some have labeled Zodiac as too talky but I think a fairer, more accurate observation would be that Fincher’s film serves as a stark reminder of the banality of evil the unmasking of which is seldom the grand adventure the movies make it out to be.

The lack of any extras is simply criminal here. This should have been a two disc set with two commentaries and an additional feature length documentary about the actual crimes and investigation