Today was pretty busy, so I'm afraid this is going to be short.
Zodiac is awesome. Besides having a great cast and an excellent director, it takes an incredibly complicated, unsolved true crime case about a serial killer and tells an understandable, compelling story about it. And it does this not by watering down the facts, but by showing you exactly how complex the mystery was and why it was so difficult to solve.
You feel the frustration of the scattered police forces as they try to coordinate their efforts without the technological benefits of so much as a fax machine. I'm trying to remember now if the movie addresses why the FBI didn't get involved and I'm not coming up with anything, so that might be a flaw. But for whatever reason, it was up to a San Francisco detective and a couple of newspaper guys -- a reporter and a cartoonist -- to put the pieces together.
Zodiac provides a convincing solution to the mystery while being honest about why it wasn't accepted by everyone on the case back in the day. In other words, it's a satisfying look at a frustrating case and that's pretty amazing. It's certainly more than Hollywoodland was able to achieve.
And man was it great to see Anthony Edwards and Robert Downey Jr. again. Downey's alcoholic reporter got me itching even more to see him play Tony Stark.
Four out of five black mustangs.
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