Scooter Chronicles

Last night Marcia and I watched the movie “Zodiac” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, and Robert Downey Jr. amongst others.

The movie is based on facts and reports regarding the famed Zodiac Killer that murderer five people, injured two people (failed murder attempts), and is possibly linked to many more murderers in and around San Francisco and northern California. The known murders happened in 1968 and 1969. Others possibly linked to him happened as early as 1963, and as late as 1978. This movie goes along with the book by Robert Graysmith, an employee of the San Francisco Chronicle that received letters from the Zodiac Killer. Graysmith in the movie is a cartoonist for the paper, and is played by Gyllenhaal. Downey Jr. plays crime reporter Paul Avery, Ruffalo plays detective David Toschi, and Edwards plays detective William Armstrong.

Marcia is a fan of astrology, so the name Zodiac caught her eye. We both knew little about the movie and just assumed that it was a fiction-thriller. I actually enjoyed it more knowing that it was based on real facts about a serial killer.

The movie was very long (2 and a half hours). It follows mostly detective Toschi’s investigation and Graysmith’s obsession of solving the crime. And though very interesting through most of it, by the end we just wanted to know who the Zodiac killer was so we could go to bed. We were shocked to find out that the cases are all still open today, and that the main suspect couldn’t be strongly linked to the murders (Arthur Leigh Allen played by John Carroll Lynch), and that he died two days before he was to be interviewed by the police for the third time back in 1992.

At the end of the movie, there was text following up what had happened beyond 1992 (after one of the surviving victims had positively identified Arthur Leigh Allen in a photo). The text was incredibly small and hard to read! It seems that those producing the DVD didn’t make it easier for those to read when watching in on a TV screen compared to a giant movie theater screen. I thought that was downright sloppy.

For those interested in true crime stories, or just movies based on real life events, this would be a great movie to see, even if it did seem to last longer then it should have.