Word: graysmith
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Dates: during 2007-2007
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Based on a book by onetime Chronicle cartoonist Robert Graysmith, the film is less a serial-killer thriller than an All the President's Men wannabe, with the young Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) as Woodward and Bernstein, and his senior colleague Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) as a crusty Ben Bradlee type with a lot more showmanship and a mile-wide self-destructive streak. Their sleuthing sometimes helps, mostly annoys detectives Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). When Toschi is asked, "Have you considered that the killer might be Paul Avery?", he deadpans, "Frequently...
That's about the only spot of humor in the script, by James Vanderbilt, whose widely circulated screenplay of Richard A. Clarke's Against All Enemies--yet to be made--is a model of compression and clarity. This one, with two main story lines (Toschi's official pursuit and Graysmith's amateur obsession) plus a character count in the high dozens and lots of leads that go nowhere, right up to the end, is necessarily a more sprawling affair. Yet it manages to be true to the complexity of the case while never losing cohesion or coherence...
...newspaper by the master he somehow still adores. The star quality has to carry the movie, all 2 1/2 hours of it, since Fincher assumes that audiences will be fascinated by the minutiae of police work while they get only a few face-on glimpses of the man Graysmith believes is the killer: Arthur Leigh Allen...
What does it take to catch a killer? For Robert Graysmith, author of “Zodiac” and “Zodiac Unmasked: The Identity of America’s Most Exclusive Serial Killer,” the answer to that question is simple: obsession. An obsession that would take priority over his family, his job, and his safety. “I am simply stupid,” Graysmith says, referring to his lack of prudence when dealing with the Zodiac Killer. But Graysmith was not a police inspector or a crime reporter like the other three...
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