It took nearly 40 years before Hollywood made a serious attempt at a movie about the Zodiac Killer. There’s good reason too… the story and known facts just isn’t enough to make a full featured film. Unfortunately, Zodiac runs for OVER 2 and a half hours, so that gives you a good idea of how I felt about this movie. The problem was that they didn’t add enough fictional content to the movie, instead dragging out the same facts scene after scene. Remember, “based on a true story” doesn’t mean it has to stick with the truth… we watch movies to be entertained, and this movie was just way too slow.
The movie also jumped from timeframe to timeframe way too much. 3 months later. 8 months later. 2 1/2 years later. The reasoning was because true to the facts, the Zodiac killer did disappear for long stretches of time. Again, some fictional plot would’ve been better to help connect the multiple timelines of the movie. But then again, if they did add fictional plot to the movie, it would’ve been a copy of Dirty Harry, which was loosely based on the Zodiac Killer shortly after the first murders in 1971. In fact, they referenced this in Zodiac.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m very interested in the Zodiac Killer. In fact, I’ve read through the crime library files, the wikipedia files, I’ve watched an A&E special on it too, which covered all the facts and interesting items in the case, all covered within 60 minutes WITH commercials. If this is the first time you’ve heard of the Zodiac Killer, watch the shows I recommended instead of seeing this movie. It’ll make you want to try and find out more about the case than from watching the movie, which would probably leave you with a “who gives a fuck” mentality.
