← Back to Reviews
in
Zodiac (David Fincher 2007)
For me, watching innocent victims being tied up and stabbed to death is way too violent to enjoy the movie especially when the scene is so brutally realistic and depicts an actual murder...I just don't need that image burned into my brain. I think that many movie watchers are desensitized to violence by the movies that they watch, so that they don't view brutal killings as shown in Zodiac as much of a big deal. But I don't watch slasher horror films, etc and so the killings were horrible to watch.
As an aside, I don't think showing the killings are necessary or even helpful to the movie's story, they could've been done off screen. The stories focus is that the Zodiac is a conundrum, a puzzling mystery to all. By showing the audience the actual crimes it takes away from the feeling of being in the cops shoes and feeling completely baffled by the mystery, as it makes us privy to what actual happened.
Even without the disturbing killings, this was a poorly directed movie. Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. blew in this. Downey was the same off the wall, nutsy druggie/drunk character that he's played in so many other films. He's like a caricature, good in a comedy-drama but silly in such a serious film.
Gyllenhaal is just a boring actor. I've never really liked him. He had no handle on how to be the odd, cartoonist guy. I was painful aware of his attempts at doing a 'character' and he failed as his acting was too visible. It was only towards the end of the film when he became obsessed with finding the identity of the Zodiac that his performance rang true.
Mark Ruffalo and his cop partner were both good in this and I did like whoever played Melvin Belli too.
The story itself was lagging, did this really need to be 2 hours and 45 minutes? Zodiac has the same lack luster quality as another disappointing news investigative movie, The Post.
A really good investigative, true crime movie was Spotlight...about child abuse by pedophile Catholic priest...and that film didn't need to show children being horribly abused for shock value. BTW I didn't care for The Social Network and I don't like David Fincher style of direction.
Zodiac (David Fincher 2007)
For me, watching innocent victims being tied up and stabbed to death is way too violent to enjoy the movie especially when the scene is so brutally realistic and depicts an actual murder...I just don't need that image burned into my brain. I think that many movie watchers are desensitized to violence by the movies that they watch, so that they don't view brutal killings as shown in Zodiac as much of a big deal. But I don't watch slasher horror films, etc and so the killings were horrible to watch.
As an aside, I don't think showing the killings are necessary or even helpful to the movie's story, they could've been done off screen. The stories focus is that the Zodiac is a conundrum, a puzzling mystery to all. By showing the audience the actual crimes it takes away from the feeling of being in the cops shoes and feeling completely baffled by the mystery, as it makes us privy to what actual happened.
Even without the disturbing killings, this was a poorly directed movie. Both Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. blew in this. Downey was the same off the wall, nutsy druggie/drunk character that he's played in so many other films. He's like a caricature, good in a comedy-drama but silly in such a serious film.
Gyllenhaal is just a boring actor. I've never really liked him. He had no handle on how to be the odd, cartoonist guy. I was painful aware of his attempts at doing a 'character' and he failed as his acting was too visible. It was only towards the end of the film when he became obsessed with finding the identity of the Zodiac that his performance rang true.
Mark Ruffalo and his cop partner were both good in this and I did like whoever played Melvin Belli too.
The story itself was lagging, did this really need to be 2 hours and 45 minutes? Zodiac has the same lack luster quality as another disappointing news investigative movie, The Post.
A really good investigative, true crime movie was Spotlight...about child abuse by pedophile Catholic priest...and that film didn't need to show children being horribly abused for shock value. BTW I didn't care for The Social Network and I don't like David Fincher style of direction.