Merrick Morton Jake Gyllenhaal is on the trail of a serial killer in the thriller "Zodiac."

By Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It was the dark ages of crime-fighting: 1969.

No DNA evidence. No fax machines, cell phones or e-mail.

No "America's Most Wanted" or Greta Van Susteren. No drumbeat of cable news or crawls across the bottom of the television screen. No "CSI" shows that turn average folks into crime-scene experts who know enough not to put their fingerprints all over a letter from a potential serial killer.

		'Zodiac' Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., above, Mark Ruffalo. Director: David Fincher. Rating: R for some strong killings, language, drug material and brief sexual images. Web site: http://www.thezodiacfilm.com/

Just the so-called Zodiac killer, who terrified the San Francisco Bay area, who turned into an obsession for cops and a couple of newspaper employees and who is the focus of a new thriller called "Zodiac," directed by David Fincher.

"Zodiac" methodically recounts the investigation that consumed the life of Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), an editorial cartoonist turned author; crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.); and a homicide inspector named Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and his partner, William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards).

"Zodiac" dramatizes the search for the serial killer, the lengths to which amateurs and professionals pursued the case and the toll that exacted.

The story is told not through the eyes of the Zodiac killer, but through Graysmith, a quiet newcomer at the San Francisco Chronicle when the newspaper first receives a letter and coded message from the purported murderer. The killer taunts the media and the cops, as the body count and anxiety levels rise.

The case is complicated by possible copycats, killings that cross jurisdictional lines, evidence that goes unnoticed and personal meltdowns. "Zodiac," based on actual case files and two books written by the real Graysmith, is told in methodical fashion, with on-screen updates such as "4 weeks later, San Francisco."

It's a murder mystery with a sincere brainiac at its center, a former Eagle Scout who never met a research task too monumental or who never was shy about turning his children into his amateur assistants.

Graysmith didn't write the screenplay -- James Vanderbilt, author of "Darkness Falls" and "The Rundown," did -- but he is presented as a clean-cut hero whose obsession doesn't send him into the bottom of a bottle but the bottom of a box of records. Downey's fearless crime reporter comes undone while the cops retreat or are forced into the shadows, even as the Zodiac killer inspires a movie called "Dirty Harry."

Fincher's surprisingly un-flashy style (this is the director of "Seven," after all) allows us to follow the case in chronological order and play investigator as the cops pursue leads that pour in at the rate of 90 an hour at one point.

"Zodiac" is a dutiful retelling of a gripping crime story that doesn't have the usual tidy Hollywood ending. When a movie runs 2 hours and 34 minutes and still feels abbreviated, with questions big and small unanswered, that can be a disappointment or simply a reflection of reality.

Aided by period music, "Zodiac" functions best as a time capsule, a portrait of a place and a predator who still has a hold on Graysmith and others, and whose last chapter has yet to be written.