Cinematical

On July 31, 1969, a letter arrived at the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle with the handwritten admonition: "Please rush to editor!" The contents of that letter would terrorize the residents of the San Francisco Bay area,and would forever change the lives of four men: flamboyant and ambitious Detective Dave Toschi, his partner, the quieter William Armstrong, star crime reporter Paul Avery, and, perhaps most unlikely of all, quiet, unassuming political cartoonist Robert Graysmith. Inside the envelope was the first letter from the serial killer who came to be known and feared as the Zodiac killer. In addition to the handwritten letter ("This is the Zodiac speaking ... "), the envelope contained one-third of a cipher. The other two parts had been sent to two other papers. In that letter, Zodiac took credit for two recent murderous attacks on young couples, which had left two women and one man dead.

The cipher befuddled every major law enforcement agency, but it was solved, oddly enough, by a history teacher and his wife (three other ciphers sent by Zodiac have never been deciphered). And it was the quiet cartoonist, Graysmith, who put together one of the first important clues to the killers MO: the cipher referenced a 1932 film called The Most Dangerous Game, about a man on a remote island who hunted people as prey. Zodiac, a killer so wily and clever (and perhaps just a little bit lucky) that he managed to elude police for over two decades, taunted the cops with their failure to find and stop him. His threats to blow up school buses or to shoot out the tires of buses and then "pick off the little kiddies as they come bouncing off the bus" paralyzed the city, forcing police car and plane escorts for the city's schoolchildren.

One of those children was David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club), seven years old at the time, and all these years later, Fincher has finally helmed a film about the boogeyman who haunted his childhood. The resulting film, Zodiac (based on the books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked -- books written by that quiet cartoonist, Graysmith, and adapted for screen by James Vanderbilt) -- will be, I suspect, one of the best films of 2007. Zodiac, the film, is perhaps one of the most meticulously researched films ever made. The books that were the source material were the result of a decade of work by Graysmith to pull together all the information about the Zodiac killer from disparate sources. Because the killer tended to strike in multi-jurisdictional or unincorporated areas, there were multiple law enforcement agencies dealing with murders that might have been committed by the same man. At the time, Zodiac was one of the hottest, most notorious cases in the country, and every law enforcement agency involved in the case wanted to be the one to solve it. But for two decades, the case dragged on.

Toschi's partner, Armstrong, eventually burnt out on the case and transfered to another unit; famed crime reporter Paul Avery had retired to a houseboat, his health and career ruined by the case; Toschi himself came under fire, being accused of sending a "Zodiac" letter himself to revitalize interest in the case -- a situation that, though later disproved, derailed Toschi's career. But long after all the other players in the Zodiac case had given up on solving it, Graysmith couldn't let go, even at great personal cost. Therein lies the greatest strength of this film: it's not a blood-and-gore film, and it doesn't even focus all that much on the murders themselves, other than to establish what's going on. Fincher keeps the focus of the film tightly lensed on Avery, Toschi, Armstrong and Graysmith, making this a film more about the men's obsession with a case that took its personal toll on their health, their marriages and their careers than a film focusing on a killer.

The attention to detail in the film is remarkable. Fincher reproduced the old Chronicle offices down to the most minute detail. From the line of phone booths where reporters would talk to leads, to the unusual lighting in the ceiling, to the same notepads, pens, and staff directories that existed in 1969, the Chronicle 's old digs have been reborn in the film nearly exactly as their were at the time. Crime scenes were meticulously set up to be precisely as they were in the original crime scene photos. Even the casting shows thoughtful consideration to be as authentic as possible in dramatizing this dark tale. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as quiet Eagle Scout Graysmith. Graysmith himself has said that Gyllenhaal doesn't so much impersonate him as he does interpret him. Gyllenhaal's performance doesn't dominate the screen, but given how the real Graysmith tended to linger in the background, that's not necessarily inappropriate.

Gyllenhaal captures well how the unassuming Graysmith, lurking in the shadows of the more colorful players in the Zodiac case, quietly but persistently offered his help until he was finally taken seriously. Mark Ruffalo is hot in demand these days, and seeing his portrayal of Dave Toschi is a clear indication of why. Toschi was a big star back in those days, and with his custom-upside down holster, massive sideburns, and penchant for enormous bowties, he was hard to miss . Ruffalo channels Toschi so perfectly that if you look at old photos of Toschi, it's almost hard to see the differences. Toschi himself was the basis for a number of famous movie cops, including Steve McQueen in Bullit, and Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Anthony Edwards is the perfect choice to play Armstrong, Toschi's quiet, focused, more serious partner; he plays perfectly off of Ruffalo's almost manic energy level.

Robert Downey Jr., not surprisingly, has a solid turn as well as the hot-to-trot crime reporter, Avery, whose personal demons, no doubt, contributed to the ultimate failure of his health; Downey has faced his own demons many times, and is the perfect choice to play the star reporter. who ends up consumed by the case. The film is long -- almost three hours -- but it so sucks you into the tension of the race to find and stop Zodiac that I never even stirred in my seat. Whether you're a true-crime buff or just an average cinephile who enjoys a well-crafted film, you'll find something to like about Zodiac. Here's hoping that Fincher has finally put the boogeyman to rest.