This is not a standard, flashy, serial killer story with chases, shoot-outs or even the obligatory lines of the genre such as: "he's never going to stop; he's going to go on and on until somebody does something." It deals with dozens of characters and a huge number of facts. Fincher organizes them in a fairly comprehensible manner, but this doesn't mean he makes it easy for the audience to keep up, as we're constantly in danger of getting lost with the shifting from one line of investigation to another.. One moment we feel fairly certain about the killer's identity and then the script take a 180 deree turn to reveal a new suspect that will soon be disregarded, only to eventually send us back to the first. This makes it the best kind of DVD experience as we're likely to grasp new elements with every viewing.
The picture is not made up of large, spectacular scenes but rather involves the viewer by stringing together smaller ones that add up to moments of great relevance. The abundant visual effects are just there to provide images of sites that no longer exist and shots that would have been impossible to film (think of the aerial camera following a taxi on a 1970s street). As a result, we are seldom even aware these are Special Effects. Are the film's conclusions accurate? Our subconscious has a tendency to regard anything that's convincingly portrayed on screen as the truth, but "Zodiac" clearly shows more concern with sticking to the facts than the average movie based on true events.
Perhaps the biggest problem some people had with "Zodiac" was the fact it did not provide them with a conventional, happy ending or tidy conclusions. Not everybody was ready to accept a finale that didn't answer all of their questions and tie up every loose end. Fincher could have taken liberties to better fit the ending with these expectations but he chose to remain true to the story, the only approach that could ever feel authentic in a famous case like this. Besides, in a film whose central subject matter is the lead character's obsession, at the end he is able to make sense of his decades-long ordeal by getting the chance to face the alleged killer and look him straight in the eye. This image turned out much more powerful than any made up ending ever could.
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