The acting is superb, specifically Jake Gyllenhall, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. (though the entire cast excells), and the pacing works just right despite moving slowly across almost three decades. In a way it reminded me of a really good, 2-hour 40 min.-long episode of one of the "Law & Order"s, in that there is a large cast working together on the same crime, but call it Law & Press instead as the focus is on the San Francisco PD and the San Francisco Enquirer who is brought into the middle of the mystery due to secret codes the Zodiac killer demands to printed in exchange for human life. You see all the murders (depicted graphically but not bloodily), but never the murderer, and we follow along with those trying to catch the Zodiac killer. The long hunt takes a toll on all those involved and it's really only two that see it through to the end.
It's a character-driven story and the tagline for the film, "there's more than one way to take a life" (or something) holds very true. While the public fear over the murders, which span a few different counties in California, goes away as the murders end, those who invested so much time in solving the crimes, from the lead detectives to a cartoonist at the Enquirer, and those directly effected by the murders (siblings, survivors) can't let it go so quickly.
And, as the pieces are put together, we come to know the Zodiac himself, including the various suspects the SFPD investigate. We get an insight into the minds of those murder and those who solve murders, and in the end it's satisfying in a creepy sort of way.
It's a character-driven story and the tagline for the film, "there's more than one way to take a life" (or something) holds very true. While the public fear over the murders, which span a few different counties in California, goes away as the murders end, those who invested so much time in solving the crimes, from the lead detectives to a cartoonist at the Enquirer, and those directly effected by the murders (siblings, survivors) can't let it go so quickly.
And, as the pieces are put together, we come to know the Zodiac himself, including the various suspects the SFPD investigate. We get an insight into the minds of those murder and those who solve murders, and in the end it's satisfying in a creepy sort of way.
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