The Zodiac (17 March 2006)
directed by Alexander Bulkley
starring Justin Chambers, Robin Tunney, Rory Culkin, William Mapother, Brad William Henke, Rex Linn, Philip Baker Hall, Marty Lindsey, Brian Bloom, Nate Dushku
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MPAA rating: Studio: ShadowMachine Films, Myriad Pictures Script: Kelley Bulkeley, Alexander Bulkley Music: Michael Suby Running time: 97 minutes Tags: 1960s; 1970s; based on true story; California; Crime; cryptograms; Drama; knives; murder; Mystery; pistols; police investigations; San Francisco; serial killers; Thriller Tactical strength: [5/10]
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for strong violence and language
The Zodiac tries to capture the zeitgeist of the San Francisco Bay area while the Zodiac serial killer actively killed victims and corresponded with the local press. Police Inspector Matt Parrish (Justin Chambers) gets assigned to solve what at first seems like a one-time brutal killing. As the case expands and the police and press come to understand that a serial killer has started to operate in the Bay area, Parrish becomes more and more obsessed with solving the case. At the same time, Parrish's son, Johnny (Rory Culkin), shows a morbid interest in the details of the crimes. Director Buckley wants to show the fear and panic that existed as the press revealed the acts of the Zodiac killer and the police operated with barely any substantial clues.
I don't know why recent films about the 1960s get most of the color washed out of the scenes, as if the lives of people during the 1960s had less meaning or impact on the people involved. I can remember the colors of my parents' house and yard, and I don't remember that the grass had any different color in 1969 than it does today. Yet, the makers of The Zodiac have fallen into this visual clich .
We watch with interest as the killer continues to confound police, and at the typical point where the police would make a breakthrough and arrest the killer in a 100 against one raid of the killer's secret lair, the film ends abrubtly. We see Inspector Parish sitting at the kitchen table with his wife (Robin Tunney), and he makes a conciliatory gesture toward her, implying that he will give up some of his passion for chasing the Zodiac killer and redirect his attention to his family. After this we see on-screen text that tells us that authorities never captured the Zodiac killer, and he continued to correspond with newspapers into the mid 1970s. I think Bulkley wanted to use his ending to emphasize the unsatisfactory ending to the case, but an audience wants something different from a movie. In a literary sense, the characters do change because of the events in the story, but we don't see any results of this change. Will Johnny, obsessed with learning about the killer, have a normal life, or will he turn to a life of perverted crimes? Will Parrish restore the harmony in his marriage and home?
By introducing the elements of the inspector's family, Buckley has some responsibility to provide a better projection of how they progress over the years that follow. We know more about the mysterious killer's activities beyond the scope of the film than we do about the main characters'. While Bulkley does briefly demonstrate the fear that permeated some neighborhoods, he brings us into the Parrish home without giving us enough resolution to the tensions he built up within its walls.
