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Some Spoilers, sort of

I rented out Zodiac yesterday. The film is directed by David Fincher, he of Fight Club and Se7en fame. It tells the story of what were dubbed the “Zodiac killings” of 1968 and 69 but in a way that focuses on the investigators trying to make sense of a gruesome and baffling case. The investigators are initially Police Detectives. Later in the film as they see their hope of finding the killer disappear we shift attention to a Newspaper Cartoonist who, obsessed with the case, frantically searches for the truth. This very simplified synopsis gives no hint of the actual complexity of the plot, nor the richness of the characters or the wonderful, inventive, daring direction. I came to the film expecting to enjoy it as i had heard good things. Some reviews I’d read last year though mentioned its slow pace along with its disappointing ending so i wasn’t really prepared to be blown away. I was however completely blown-away. I think the film is brilliant and I hope to articulate my thoughts on it into several posts.

I’ll start with a look at a scene between the two Detectives assigned to the Zodiac case. Inspector David Toschi and Inspector William Armstrong (Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) are heading to assess the scene of a murder thats just taken place, a cabbie has just been shot and killed in his taxi. First Toschi moans to his partner that he’d just got to sleep. Armstrong then asks “Have you ever tried Japanese food?”. Toschi isn’t sure but they talk for a bit about exotic foods anyway.

Aside from serving as an introduction to and fleshing out of two of the movie’s important characters this short interchange highlights the toll the Zodiac case takes on them. By the film’s end over twenty years later we have seen Toschi demoted, wrongly accused of a crime, and driven crazy by an obsessive cartoonist determined to solve the case that he, despite his intelligence and the resources at his disposal, couldn’t. Perhaps even more poetically Armstrong merely put in for a transfer some time in the seventies. He’d had enough of hitting his head at the brick wall of the Zodiac case. In his final scene he tells Toschi he’s not coming in tomorrow because he’s getting himself transferred. Toschi is taken aback by this bombshell and barely has time to react to the news before Armstrong has left the car, utterly despondent.

So their conversations in the car turn out to be quite poignant when i watched the film a second time. How their minor gripes and day to day curiosities humanize the two detectives before they are slowly dragged down into the mire of the faltering investigation over the course of th film.

That scene continues and they arrive at the murder scene. They discover afterwards that the Zodiac had killed the Cabbie.