Mystery Men

Right away I have to tell you, you have to see Zodiac this weekend; it’s really, really good.

But don’t get yourself the biggest soda at the concession stand: the film clocks in at 160 minutes. That’s an awful long time to cross your legs, and trust me when I tell you this film is an edge-of-your-seater during which you do not want to have to make a quick restroom run.

Having said that, David Fincher’s tremendously tantalizing thriller achieves near perfection its first half.

As a brutal serial killer terrifies the San Francisco Bay Area and taunts police with his blocky ciphers and letters – which, to up the ante, he sends to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers – investigators in four jurisdictions search for him while trying to keep the community calm.

The case, one of the most infamous ''cold'' cases in U.S. criminal history, becomes an obsession for three men – Inspector Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), Chron cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), and Chron reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), whose lives and careers are built and destroyed by an endless trail of clues.

Suspense builds in Zodiac at an incredibly fast pace, probably because the film effectively covers more than 30 years worth of events, starting in 1969, but Fincher tends to every detail as if it was the most important.

He also engulfs every main and supporting character relevant to the investigation with the subtlest soupçon of is-he-the-Zodiac?, which only adds to the urgency of the investigation, to the unresolved nature of the case.

When Graysmith all of people, determined "to look him in the eye,” finally gets nearest to the would-be killer, Zodiac ends, with the only certainty that the bad guy may have gotten away with it, after all.

My Rating ***1/2

Photo: Paramount Pictures.