zodiac movie review imdb

A cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal, left) teams up with an ace reporter (Robert Downey Jr.) to track down an elusive serial killer in “Zodiac.” Director David Fincher, an elegant stylist, finds the right pace and style for a story about persistence in the face of evil.

‘Zodiac” is the “All the President’s Men” of serial killer movies, with Woodward and Bernstein played by a cop and a cartoonist. It’s not merely “based” on California’s infamous Zodiac killings, but seems to exude the very stench and provocation of the case. The killer, who was never caught, generously supplied so many clues that Sherlock Holmes might have cracked the case in his sitting room. But only a newspaper cartoonist was stubborn enough, and tunneled away long enough, to piece together a convincing case against a man who was perhaps guilty.

The film is a police procedural crossed with a newspaper movie, but free of most of the cliches of either. Its most impressive accomplishment is to gather a bewildering labyrinth of facts and suspicions over a period of years, and make the journey through this maze frightening and suspenseful. I could imagine becoming hopelessly mired in the details of the Zodiac investigation, but director David Fincher (“ Seven “) and his writer, James Vanderbilt , find their way with clarity through the murk. In a film with so many characters, the casting by Laray Mayfield is also crucial; like the only eyewitness in the case, we remember a face once we’ve seen it.

The film opens with a sudden, brutal, bloody killing, followed by others not too long after — five killings the police feel sure Zodiac committed, although others have been attributed to him. But this film will not be a bloodbath. The killer does his work in the earlier scenes of the film, and then, when he starts sending encrypted letters to newspapers, the police and reporters try to do theirs.

The two lead inspectors on the case are David Toschi ( Mark Ruffalo ) and William Armstrong ( Anthony Edwards ). Toschi, famous at the time, tutored Steve McQueen for “ Bullitt ” and was the role model for Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry. Ruffalo plays him not as a hotshot but as a dogged officer who does things by the book because he believes in the book. Edwards’ character, his partner, is more personally worn down by the sheer vicious nature of the killer and his taunts.

At the San Francisco Chronicle , although we meet several staffers, the key players are ace reporter Paul Avery ( Robert Downey Jr., bearded, chain-smoking, alcoholic) and editorial cartoonist Robert Graysmith ( Jake Gyllenhaal ). These characters are real, and indeed the film is based on Graysmith’s books about the case.

I found the newspaper office intriguing in its accuracy. For one thing, it is usually fairly empty, and it was true on a morning paper in those days that the office began to heat up closer to deadline Among the few early arrivals would have been the cartoonist, who was expected to work up a few ideas for presentation at the daily news meeting, and the office alcoholics, perhaps up all night, or already starting their recovery drinking. Yes, reporters drank at their desks 40 years ago, and smoked and smoked and smoked.

Graysmith is new on the staff when the first cipher arrives. He’s like the curious new kid in school fascinated by the secrets of the big boys. He doodles with a copy of the cipher, and we think he’ll solve it, but he doesn’t. He strays off his beat by eavesdropping on cops and reporters, making friends with the boozy Avery, and even talking his way into police evidence rooms. Long after the investigation has cooled, his obsession remains, eventually driving his wife ( Chloe Sevigny ) to move herself and their children in with her mom. Graysmith seems oblivious to the danger he may be drawing into his home, even after he appears on TV and starts hearing heavy breathing over the phone.

What makes “Zodiac” authentic is the way it avoids chases, shootouts, grandstanding and false climaxes, and just follows the methodical progress of police work. Just as Woodward and Bernstein knocked on many doors and made many phone calls and met many very odd people, so do the cops and Graysmith walk down strange pathways in their investigation. Because Graysmith is unarmed and civilian, we become genuinely worried about his naivete and risk-taking, especially during a trip to a basement that is, in its way, one of the best scenes I’ve ever seen along those lines.

Fincher gives us times, days and dates at the bottom of the screen, which serve only to underline how the case seems to stretch out to infinity. There is even time-lapse photography showing the Transamerica building going up. Everything leads up to a heart-stopping moment when two men look, simply look, at one another. It is a more satisfying conclusion than Dirty Harry shooting Zodiac dead, say, in a football stadium.

Fincher is not the first director you would associate with this material. In 1992, at 30, he directed “Alien 3,” which was the least of the Alien movies, but even then had his eye (“Alien 3” is one of the best-looking bad movies I have ever seen). His credits include “Se7en” (1995), a superb film about another serial killer with a pattern to his crimes; “ The Game ” (1997), with Michael Douglas caught in an ego-smashing web; “ Fight Club ” (1999), beloved by most, not by me; the ingenious terror of Jodie Foster in “ Panic Room ” (2002), and now, five years between features, his most thoughtful, involving film.

He seems to be in reaction against the slice-and-dice style of modern crime movies; his composition and editing are more classical, and he doesn’t use nine shots when one will do. (If this same material had been put through an Avid to chop the footage into five times as many shots, we would have been sending our own ciphers to the studio.) Fincher is an elegant stylist on top of everything else, and here he finds the right pace and style for a story about persistence in the face of evil. I am often fascinated by true crime books, partly because of the way they amass ominous details (the best I’ve read is Blood and Money , by Tommy Thompson ), and Fincher understands that true crime is not the same genre as crime action. That he makes every character a distinct individual is proof of that; consider the attention given to Graysmith’s choice of mixed drink.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Mark Ruffalo as David Toschi
• Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery
• John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Leigh Allen
• Brian Cox as Melvin Belli
• Philip Baker Hall as Sherwood Morrill
• Chloe Sevigny as Melanie
• Anthony Edwards as Armstrong
• Charles Fleischer as Bob Vaughn
• Zach Grenier as Mel Nicolai
• Dermot Mulroney as Capt. Marty Lee
• Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith
• Elias Koteas as Sgt. Jack Mulanax

Directed by

• David Fincher
• James Vanderbilt

Based on the book by

• Robert Graysmith

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Metacritic reviews

• 100 Village Voice Village Voice Zodiac exhausts more than one genre. Termite art par excellence, it burrows for the sake of burrowing, as fascinated by its own nooks and crannies as "Inland Empire."
• 100 Newsweek David Ansen Newsweek David Ansen The movie holds you in its grip from start to finish.
• 100 Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Zodiac never veers from its stoically gripping, police-blotter tone, yet it begins to take on the quality of a dream.
• 90 The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen Firing on all cylinders as a creepy thriller, police procedural and "All the President's Men"-style investigative newsroom drama, the smart, extremely vivid production oozes period authenticity.
• 90 Variety Todd McCarthy Variety Todd McCarthy Conveying an astonishing array of information across a long narrative arc while still maintaining dramatic rhythm and tension, this adaptation of Robert Graysmith's bestseller reps by far director David Fincher's most mature and accomplished work.
• 90 L.A. Weekly L.A. Weekly Zodiac may be the perfect meeting of filmmaker and subject ­-- an obsessive's portrait of obsession that is, finally, a monument to irresolution.
• 88 Rolling Stone Peter Travers Rolling Stone Peter Travers Unique and unmissable.
• 88 Premiere Glenn Kenny Premiere Glenn Kenny It makes for a daringly different kind of thriller -- cerebral, meticulous, haunting.
• 70 New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein New York Magazine (Vulture) David Edelstein What begins like your basic police procedural becomes more and more choppy and diffuse. To a point, that’s intentional: Zodiac was never caught, and Fincher aims to creep you out with the lack of closure.
• 67 Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten At 2 1/2 hours, the film is too long in the telling and too short on suspense.
• See all 40 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Zodiac

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Movie Review | 'Zodiac'

Hunting a Killer as the Age of Aquarius Dies

By Manohla Dargis

• March 2, 2007

David Fincher’s magnificently obsessive new film, “Zodiac,” tracks the story of the serial killer who left dead bodies up and down California in the 1960s and possibly the ’70s, and that of the men who tried to stop him. Set when the Age of Aquarius disappeared into the black hole of the Manson family murders, the film is at once sprawling and tightly constructed, opaque and meticulously detailed. It’s part police procedural, part monster movie, a funereal entertainment that is an unexpected repudiation of Mr. Fincher’s most famous movie, the serial-killer fiction “Seven,” as well as a testament to this cinematic savant’s gifts.

Informed by history and steeped in pulp fiction, “Zodiac” stars a trio of beauties — Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo — all at the top of their performance game and captured in out-of-sight high-definition digital by the cinematographer Harris Savides. Mr. Gyllenhaal is the sneaky star of the show as the real-life cartoonist turned writer Robert Graysmith, though he doesn’t emerge from the wings until fairly late, after the bodies and the investigations have cooled. A silky, seductive Mr. Downey plays Paul Avery, a showboating newspaper reporter who chased the killer in print, while Mr. Ruffalo struts his estimable stuff as Dave Toschi, the San Francisco police detective who taught Steve McQueen how to wear a gun in “Bullitt” and pursued Zodiac close to the ground.

The relative unknown James Vanderbilt wrote the jigsaw-puzzle screenplay, working from Mr. Graysmith’s exhaustive, exhausting true-crime accounts of the murders and their investigations, “Zodiac” and “Zodiac Unmasked.” Mr. Graysmith, coyly played by Mr. Gyllenhaal as something of an overgrown Hardy Boy, his great big eyes matched by his great big ambition, was a political cartoonist doodling Nixon noses at The San Francisco Chronicle when Zodiac started sending letters and ciphers to the paper, divulging intimate knowledge of the crimes. The first messages arrived in 1969, the year Zodiac shot one young couple and knifed another in separate Northern California counties before moving on to San Francisco, where he put a bullet in the head of a cabbie.

The first cipher stumped an alphabet soup of law enforcement agencies, including the C.I.A. and F.B.I., but was cracked by a California schoolteacher and his wife. The decoded cipher opened with an ominous and crudely effective flourish: “I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal.” The letters, the misspellings and the lax punctuation kept coming, and perhaps so did the murders, though only five were substantively linked to him. A publicity hound, Zodiac claimed responsibility for murders he might not have committed, a habit that added to a boogeyman mystery and myth that chroniclers of his crimes, including Mr. Graysmith, have exploited.

Mr. Fincher made his name with “Seven,” a thriller in which the grotesquely mutilated bodies of murder victims are nothing more than lovingly designed props. Although more than capable of adding to the exploitation annals, he is up to something profoundly different in this film, which opens with the shooting of two people parked on a lovers’ lane at night, an attack that is soon followed by a squirmingly visceral knife assault on a couple during a daytime idyll. By front-loading the violence, Mr. Fincher instantly makes it clear just what kind of murderer this was — one who liked to get his hands wet — and ensures that the murders don’t become the story’s payoff, our reward for all the time stamps, geographic shifts, narrative complication and frustrated action.

The story structure is as intricate as the storytelling is seamless, with multiple time-and-place interludes neatly slotted into two distinct sections. The first largely concerns the murders and the investigations; the second, far shorter one involves Graysmith’s transformation of the murders and the investigations into a narrative. With its nicotine browns, the first section, which opens in 1969 and continues through the mid-’70s, looks as if it had been art-directed by a roomful of chain smokers. Dark and moody, like all of Mr. Fincher’s work, this part has been drained of almost all bright colors, save for splashes of yellow, the color of safety and caution, and an alarming-looking blue elixir called an Aqua Velva that is Graysmith’s bar drink of choice.

The second, more vibrantly hued section begins with Graysmith sitting in the Chronicle newsroom, its yellow pillars now painted blue. He looks as bright and bushy-tailed as the day he read Zodiac’s first letter, though now he comes equipped with three kids and a wife (an unfortunately familiar scold whom Chloë Sevigny imbues with some welcome wit). But there are demons still loose, inside and out, which is why Graysmith takes on Zodiac alone, warming up the stone-cold case. Domestic tranquillity, it seems, can’t hold a candle to work, to the fanatical pursuit of meaning and self-discovery, to finding out what makes you and the world tick — which is why, while “Zodiac” contains multitudes (genres, jokes, nods at 1970s New Hollywood), it feels like Mr. Fincher’s most personal film to date.

Maybe that’s why it doesn’t have the usual movie-made shrink- rapping and beard-stroking, as in Mommy was a castrating shrew and Daddy used a two-by-four as a paddle. Throughout the film Mr. Fincher and company keep focus on Zodiac’s crimes, on the nuts and bolts of his deeds, rather than on the nurture and nature behind them. There is no normalizing psychology here, and no deep-dish symbolism either, maybe because the title crazy is so peculiarly fond of symbols, which he sprinkles in his missives and, for one murder, wears superhero style on a black-hooded costume that makes him look like a portly ninja in a Z-movie quickie. It’s no wonder the victims don’t see the threat behind the masquerade until it’s too late.

Psychology isn’t Mr. Fincher’s bag; he isn’t interested in what lies and writhes beneath, but what is right there: the visible evidence. And what beautiful evidence it is. His polished technique can leave you slack-jawed, as can his scrupulous attention to detail: the peeling walls of a derelict building in “Fight Club,” the rows of ant-size letters marching across the pages of a composition notebook in “Seven,” the bruises splashed across a woman’s arm in “Zodiac.” There is mystery in this minutiae, not just virtuosity, and maybe, to judge from reports of his painstaking process, a touch of madness. Like his detectives and journalists, Mr. Fincher seems possessed by the need to recreate reality — to revisit the scene of the crime — piece by piece.

There’s a moment early in the film when Mr. Downey stands in the Chronicle newsroom, back arched and rear gently hoisted, affecting a posture that calls to mind Gene Kelly done up as a Toulouse-Lautrec jockey in “An American in Paris.” Avery has already started his long slip-slide into boozy oblivion, abetted by toots of coke, but as he strides around the newsroom, motored by talent and self-regard, he is the guy everybody else wants to be or wants to have. Like Mr. Ruffalo’s detective, who leaves everything bobbing in his rapid wake, Mr. Downey fills the screen with life that, by its very nature, is a rebuke to the death drive embodied by the Zodiac killer. Rarely has a film with so much blood on its hands seemed so insistently alive.

“Zodiac” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It contains extremely graphic gun and knife violence, as well as alcohol abuse and cocaine use.

Opens today nationwide.

Directed by David Fincher; written by James Vanderbilt, based on the books “Zodiac” and “Zodiac Unmasked” by Robert Graysmith; director of photography, Harris Savides; edited by Angus Wall; music by David Shire; production designer, Donald Graham Burt; produced by Mr. Vanderbilt, Mike Medavoy, Arnold W. Messer, Bradley J. Fischer and Cean Chaffin; released by Paramount Pictures. Running time: 158 minutes.

WITH: Jake Gyllenhaal (Robert Graysmith), Mark Ruffalo (Inspector Dave Toschi), Robert Downey Jr. (Paul Avery), Anthony Edwards (Inspector Bill Armstrong), Brian Cox (Melvin Belli), Elias Koteas (Sgt. Jack Mulanax) and Chloë Sevigny (Melanie).

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Zodiac Reviews

I love everything about this, the look and feel -- the LIGHTING

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 19, 2024

James Vanderbilt's screenplay convinced me to research everything about the real events as soon as the movie finished which is undeniably an impactful effect of watching such a well-written, captivating narrative with well-developed, authentic characters.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 24, 2023

have come to believe it to be Fincher’s all-time best; indeed it seems likely that it is the best film about serial killings ever made.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | May 11, 2023

Zodiac, ironically, rewards revisiting over and over, while commenting on the spiritual degradation of doing so.

Full Review | Oct 2, 2022

If you feel like watching a truly great film, then dim the lights, turn off the cellphone and tablet and kick back for Zodiac.

Full Review | Sep 22, 2022

Like a contagion that festers as easily as it spreads, David Fincher's methodical Zodiac is catching.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2022

A satisfying hybrid of a journalism yarn, a police procedural, and a serial killer flick.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 16, 2021

More than any American movie of the past decade, Zodiac accepts and embraces irresolvability, which may be why it's so hypnotically rewatchable.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2021

Here and there bits bob to the surface, and we and the characters think we may have figured something out, only to have the sheer immensity of detail leave the entire thing ultimately unknowable

Full Review | Jul 2, 2021

A chiller, more fatalistic...

Full Review | Jun 5, 2021

Carve out three hours for this thinking-person's thriller.

Full Review | Feb 25, 2021

David Fincher isn't rubbing the horrors we inflict on each other in the audience's face. Here, it's something more subtle, the creeping fear of I know I'm right...but what do I do now?

Full Review | Dec 22, 2020

From the visual and technical standpoint - yes, it's fantastic. But art has always been about more than just technique, more than the sum of its parts, and that "more" is where Zodiac falls short.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 17, 2020

[Zodiac] has an interesting quality of subverting expectations, quietly stringing the viewer along until suddenly a decade's gone by and you're still trying to fit all the pieces together alongside the characters.

Full Review | Dec 8, 2020

A procedural masterwork, unencumbered by action, exploitation, or Hollywood expectations.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Nov 28, 2020

David Fincher takes his time with this frightening crime procedural, that's full of dread and excellent performances. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 5, 2020

Jake Gyllenhaal powerfully portrays Robert Graysmith, a mild-mannered political cartoonist whose life unravels as his paranoid quest to track down clues....

Full Review | May 22, 2020

Fincher presents plausible theories that are not rammed down our throats.

Full Review | May 21, 2020

Zodiac is a film that really takes its time, but does a masterful job of showing how these killings didn't just destroy the lives of the victims and their families, but how the case became a burden to almost everyone involved.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Nov 21, 2019

Zodiac is not just a masterclass in film-making and storytelling, it's proof that a horror movie does not have to be showy to be scary.

Full Review | Sep 25, 2019

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Common Sense Media Review

By Cynthia Fuchs , based on child development research. How do we rate?

Notorious case inspires dark, sinuous thriller.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this three-hour movie about the investigation into a string of real-life serial murders during the early 1970s is too violent and disturbing for most teens (and probably even some adults). While some violence takes place off screen, what does appear is brutal and bloody: The Zodiac shoots a…

Why Age 18+?

Drinking to drunkenness in bars (Paul and Robert favor blue drinks called "

Repeated profanity, especially "f--k," as well as "s--t," &q

Extremely bloody crime scenes; violence includes shooting, stabbing (especially

Some references by name (Folgers, the movie Bullitt), plus background imagery (C

Suggestion of sexual desire as first victims "park" (they're shot

Any Positive Content?

Serial killer is cruel and plainly deranged; cops and reporters argue amongst th

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Drinking to drunkenness in bars (Paul and Robert favor blue drinks called "Aqua Velvas"); more drinking at Belli's Christmas party (he offers a "toddy"); frequent cigarette smoking; Paul looks high/wasted at work -- he snorts cocaine and keeps a full bar and other drugs in his home.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Repeated profanity, especially "f--k," as well as "s--t," "hell," "goddamn it," and other colorful language ("Sweet mother of Christ," "Jesus on crutches," "Tell him to screw," "crap," "getting your rocks off with a girl") and name-calling ("shorty" and "retard").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Extremely bloody crime scenes; violence includes shooting, stabbing (especially brutal), fighting; much discussion of means of murder, ammunition, and gun types; letters from killer describe plans to kill children on school buses (a boy hears this on TV and looks worried); mention of gas chamber; woman in prison appears with dark bruises on her arm; scary scene in basement when Robert thinks he's met the killer by accident (jump shot, dark shadows, tense music); discussion of a suspect's deviant history ("touching kids").

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Some references by name (Folgers, the movie Bullitt ), plus background imagery (Coca-Cola and Campbell's soup in vending machines, Slinky on TV); Dirty Harry on movie screen.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Suggestion of sexual desire as first victims "park" (they're shot before they even kiss); Paul reports that the killer is a "latent homosexual."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Serial killer is cruel and plainly deranged; cops and reporters argue amongst themselves and become obsessed with the case to the point of ruining their home lives. Paul gives his editor the finger.

Parents need to know that this three-hour movie about the investigation into a string of real-life serial murders during the early 1970s is too violent and disturbing for most teens (and probably even some adults). While some violence takes place off screen, what does appear is brutal and bloody: The Zodiac shoots a couple in their car, stabs another couple in the back (the victims' pained, horrified faces are shown both times), and shoots a cabbie. Police officers and reporters discuss the deaths in some detail. Characters drink heavily and smoke frequently (one also uses hard drugs). References are made to the killer's "latent homosexuality" and a suspect's pedophilia. Language includes repeated uses of "f--k." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (21)
• Kids say (30)

Based on 21 parent reviews

well made thriller with some confusing moments

What's the Story?

An intelligent, sinuous mystery, ZODIAC is less interested in sensational violence than in the ways that the media affects such violence. Based on the notorious, still-unsolved early-1970s Zodiac murders in the San Francisco area, the movie focuses first on efforts to figure out the murderer's motives and then on the ways that the Zodiac "imagined" himself into public consciousness by writing letters to the San Francisco Chronicle and leaving clues to taunt the police. The film begins with a murder -- the first one for which the killer took public credit. After the shooting, Zodiac calls the police and sends a letter to the Chronicle , demonstrating -- in his mind, anyway -- that he's smarter than all of them. As he uses the media to "make himself up," the movie considers the effects of the case on those who pursue him, including Inspector David Toschi ( Mark Ruffalo ) and his partner, Inspector William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards); as well as earnest cartoonist Robert Graysmith ( Jake Gyllenhaal ) and brilliantly self-destructive crime reporter Paul Avery ( Robert Downey Jr. ). They run into problems at every turn, from law enforcement officials in different jurisdictions who don't want to work together to handwriting experts, fingerprinters, and even celebrity lawyer Melvin Belli ( Brian Cox ). With egos getting in the way, only rudimentary technologies to work with, and legal impediments, no one cracks the case, and everyone loses themselves to it.

Is It Any Good?

David Fincher 's excellent movie includes several violent murder scenes (a stabbing is especially grisly). But it's more interested in the consequences of the brutality: crime scenes, investigative procedures, fear in the community. In a mess of intersecting obsessions and deceptions, Zodiac finds remarkable coherence, tracing the similar needs, means, and fictions that structure truth.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the media's relationship with serial killers. How do the killers use the media to gain attention? How do the media use the killers to gain ratings? How do viewers and readers respond to such coverage? Think about how movies portray killers and their pursuers: Unlike The Silence of the Lambs , this movie focuses on the investigation, with very little information about the killer. How does that affect the film's narrative and displays of violence? Is violence more effective when it's shown, or when it's implied? Why?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 1, 2007
• On DVD or streaming : July 24, 2007
• Cast : Chloe Sevigny , Jake Gyllenhaal , Mark Ruffalo
• Director : David Fincher
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Warner Bros.
• Genre : Thriller
• Run time : 165 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : some strong killings, language, drug material and brief sexual images.
• Last updated : September 7, 2024

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What to watch next.

The Silence of the Lambs

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