Tuesday 31 July 2007

Zodiac



For 30 minutes I had a new hero - his name was David Fincher.

It has one of the slickest opening chapters to a movie I've seen in a while. The style, the editing, the shots. All beautiful. To be honest, it continued in this way for the rest of the film, but I found after about 30-40 mins it lost direction, then it just made embarrassing noises hoping we would look away while it scurried off.

To give David credit its based on a true story. We know they didn't find the guy, so you're going into movie knowing that the hero/'s arn't going to get a payoff. So as the audience we don't either. But I still felt that the end could have been delt with better than the exposition text - "John so and so went on to ...." "and he was never seen again!....?". *sigh*. It seemed like a cop out. and after the great direction and acting I felt ripped off.

Maybe it was just the DOP I should be thanking? there were some absolulty beautiful shots in the film. The pan away from the taxi - won't spoil it if you havn't seen it - was simple and amazing I thought. But it could only carry the movie so far. There is a huge amount of info on the Zodiac killer, so I think by trying to capture the entire 30 years it lost its relativity. Shame, since I really thought it was going to be one of my favourite movies from the beginning.

The acting was great. Robert Downey stole the show again, by playing himself pretty much, but alway entertaining.

3 comments:

pabs said...

Possible spoilers:

You really have to wonder about the logic of making this movie. In fact the more I think about it the more I want my giggle back.

Not to mention trying someone in the people's popular court of cinema when 30 years of police work couldn't is slightly immoral at best.

In other news I'm currently recording an LP that has no sound. It's risky but I think it will pay off.

Andrew Silke said...

Pity I really wanted to see this one, I still might just for the cinimatography

Anonymous said...

I'm gonna buy that album Pab's and play it on the ipod I don't have.