Uneven film. Some very good stuff (Robert Downey is excellent, and John Carroll Lynch could scare starving buzzards off a gutwagon) but an ill defined script and an inability to stay on point keep this from achieving its potential.

Gylenhall is just Gylenhall. He needs a director to push him to be good, and that just doesn't happen here.

Zodiac struggled to maintain my attention over its near three-hour runtime by trying to equally represent too many stories and themes. This film has it all...halfheartedly, anyway: the story of the zodiac killer himself, the power of the press in the 60's & 70's, the prolonged investigation of the as-yet-unsolved murders complete with information-sharing shortfalls between precincts, a vaguely nostalgic view of the San Francisco bay area, and, finally, the decay of a marriage on the basis of a husband's obsession with the case. That's too much ground to cover adequately with a mini-series, let alone a film. Hell, that's almost too much for a book.

The effort surprised me from the likes of David Fincher, notably the director of Fight Club and Seven (another, far more interesting take on a serial killer, albeit fictional). With this meandering effort and the hopelessly dull Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I think it's clear that Fincher is only as good as the screenplays he is given. More surprising to me is the critical acclaim both these films received. From anyone else (and with less of a star-riffic cast), I've a feeling they'd be blasted for their mediocrity. Fincher himself seems to need some direction, as of late.

In any case...this film fails at what it aspires to be, which is too many things to to many different people. It may succeed for people who lived through these events as nostalgic reference alone, but lacking that context it didn't work for me even as a resident of San Francisco interested in learning more about the Zodiac killer.

Excellent renter. Don't be intimidated by the length (it's 2.5 hours)....you'll be sucked in the whole time. I usually have a problem with jake gyllenhaal in grown-up movies: I'm like, "how can you be divorced with 2 kids when you're only 15 years old?" But he pulled this one off. Robert Downey Jr. is magnificent.

  "Fascinating and uncompromising...Zodiac holds you in its grip from start to finish." Said David Ansen from, Newsweek. "A mind-bending, nonstop Mesmerizer of a movie..." said Peter Travers, Rolling Stone. Based on the true story of the notorious serial killer and the intense manhunt he inspired, Zodiac is a superbly crafted thriller from the Director of Se7en and The Panic Room. Featuring an outstanding ensemble cast led by Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chloe Sevigny, Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox, Elias Koteas, Donal Logue, John Carrol Lynch, and Dermot Mulroney.

 Zodiac is a searing and Singularly haunting examination of twin obsessions: One man's desire to kill and another's quest for the truth. Rated R: For some strong killings, language, drug material, and brief sexual images. 157 minutes long. Based on the book by Robert GraySmith, and Directed by David Fincher.

I bought this movie on dvd a few days ago, and I could not stop watching it, i was so interested in the movie, i had to finish watching the movie. So if you like to watch true story movies, i consider this movie to watch, unless you get scared easy.

Boring. Nothing happens. If you're a David Fincher martyr, you'll make yourself like it regardless. . Over two and a half hours? What was gained from that, other than making it dreadful to watch in one sitting? Hence, I broke it up into three nights at about 45 minutes a pop. It's really hard for it to hold your interest at all. Here's a helpful hint - watch it with subtitles on. The dialogue is also way too San Francisco local and the names of too many cities, lakes, streets, counties, and buildings are mentioned too fast and too often that it will make your head spin. Some cool fashions and set design to recreate the late 60's and 70's, that about the only merit this film had. Other than that, let's just say I'm glad I borrowed it from my neighbor instead of spending any hard earned money dragging through this! 

Very good, thought-provoking film based on the real-life Zodiac killings of the late 60's/early 70's in San Francisco. Zodiac was a serial killer who viciously killed people at random while wearing what appeared to be a medieval executioner's mask, wrote mocking letters to the police in code, and was never captured (the Scorpio killer played by Andy Robinson in "Dirty Harry" was loosely based on him). I don't find the film the masterpiece that some have...there were too many parts of it that quite frankly dragged...but it's definitely well worth seeing, and is definitely an atypical thriller. It's more a film about obsession than it is about serial killers. Jake Gyllenhaal gives a noteworthy performance as Robert Graysmith, a cartoonist working for the San Francisco Chronicle who believes that he can crack the case, and the case comes to consume his life for decades. Also very good is Robert Downey as an alcoholic journalist (an ironic or cynical bit of casting perhaps, but Downey was always capable of magnetic performances when he wanted to, and he's magnetic here). Graysmith came to feel that the killer was a repellent pedophile named Arthur Leigh Allen, and he's never wavered in this belief. The film too leaves the impression that Allen was the culprit, even though he was never accused or charged. I'm certainly not enough of an expert on the case to comment with any authority, but in 2002, authorities did a DNA test on one of the letters Zodiac sent to the police in 1969, and it didn't match with Leigh, who died some years ago of a heart attack.