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Top Critics (49)
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DVD (50)
There are no tidy, last-minute plot twists to make you feel good in Fincher's Zodiac, just focus -- to keep an audience focused -- and the most disciplined filmmaking you've seen in forever.
[W]here Se7en, with its stygian gloom and theatrical executions, inflated the serial killer genre to gothic proportions, Zodiac lets the air back out. It is methodical rather than macabre, clinical rather than cruel.
Fincher, more subdued ... and aching for a return to smart suspense films from the likes of Sidney Lumet and Alan J. Pakula, pulls us by the collar into the frame and cranks the sense of menace taut without cheap tricks or cop-out gimmicks.
Gyllenhaal always manages to present a person of some sensitivity without leaning on actorish resources.
I think this is a great film.
Any honest neurotic could probably tell you: the emotional payoff of an obsession is not attaining some longed-for goal -- it's the obsession itself, which fulfills certain needs.
A complex crime drama that limits its action, opting to save it for the times that bring the greatest impact.
So insistent, and successful, is David Fincher at duplicating real-life hypervigilance that you may try writing a "k" in two, not three, strokes to see the difference - damning and admiring how this indisputable masterpiece drags you down the rabbit hole.
Zodiac is a great film that many true crime buffs would love due to the treatment given to the subject, and that many movie fans will admire thanks to David Fincher's direction and the performances of its cast.
Ultimately the lack of tautness in the storytelling, seemingly stemming from a desire to be as faithful as possible to Graysmith's book, costs the film dearly.
An enthrallingly unsatisfactory film, worth watching and deciphering
Zodiac is a marvel of moody photography, as it tries to capture the funereal pall hanging over a metropolitan city in the grip of fear.
Although the film is a good police procedural that moves methodically through the available clues, its strong suit is its characterizations. (Blu-ray Edition)
...an effective reenactment of some chilling real-life events.
Zodiac does a great job of showing three different paths (reporter, cop, cartoonist) in trying to capture a serial killer.
Notorious case inspires dark, sinuous thriller.
Zodiac has us ponder the frustrations of a case that won't close up tightly like your weekly CSI.
Gone are the emphatic jumps and the flying-camera-through-the-keyhole style of "Panic Room". By avoiding the superficial scares he ends up creating a more devastating dread
It is not its lack of resolution that makes Zodiac a poor film, it is its stupefying dull progression.
An all-star cast delivers in David Fincher's look into the investigation around one of history's great unsolved serial killer cases.
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