Overdirected ‘Zodiac’ a tired tale of a serial killer

In theaters

ZODIAC, directed by David Fincher, written by James Vanderbilt, 160 minutes, rated R.

Call it bad timing, call it uninspired direction, but don’t call it a good movie.

Coming so soon on the heels of last year’s best film, the Academy Award-winning ensemble drama “The Departed,” David Fincher’s own ensemble drama “Zodiac” can’t help but court comparisons. The film fails to achieve the electricity Scorsese pulled from his cast, which was alive in ways that the cast of “Zodiac” should have been but, with one notable exception, simply isn’t.

Since “Zodiac” is a movie about the famed serial killer of the title, other comparisons follow, such as Spike Lee’s excellent “Summer of Sam,” the 1999 film that followed the murders left in the wake of David Berkowitz, better known as Son of Sam, who took New York City by storm in 1977.

Effortlessly, Lee captured a city not only unnerved by the dread of not knowing what lurked within the city’s nooks, but also a city in the flux of social change. It was a movie as much about Berkowitz as it was about the rush of disco anthems, punk rock, rampant sex and unforgettable machismo that fueled that era’s pre-AIDS culture. What Lee saw in the late 1970s is that Berkowitz was just one red flag in a society reeling out of control. Attending to each layered his movie with unexpected depth.

“Zodiac” has its moments, but it’s never as interesting. From James Vanderbilt’s long-winded script, Fincher’s meticulous, nearly three-hour film is about the quest to bring down Zodiac, who remains at large today (unless he’s dead) after wreaking havoc on Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The effort to capture him was formidable, both from a police perspective and a journalistic perspective. But since the killer was never caught, there’s the sense going into the film that perhaps Fincher might pull an Oliver Stone and close the books with his own theories. He doesn’t. Instead, he follows information already presented in Robert Graysmith’s two books based on the Zodiac case. As such, there is no payoff in the telling, no fresh ideas, and the movie’s ending, as a result, is unsatisfying.

Some of the acting follows suit. Fincher, a perfectionist, demanded up to 70 takes on each scene, which is a good reason why so many of the performances seem drained of life. As Graysmith, the San Francisco Chronicle political cartoonist who became obsessed with the case after it was abandoned, Jake Gyllenhaal is especially flat; you can feel his fatigue, which becomes ours.

Faring better are Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards as detectives Dave Toschi and Bill Armstrong; in spite of the fact that their characters are underwritten, they have an easy, believable give and take. Dermot Mulroney and Chloe Sevigny are wasted in dull supporting roles, though Brian Cox, in a blowout silver wig, sparkles in a cameo as defense lawyer Melvin Belli. The film’s one memorable performance comes from Robert Downey Jr. as Paul Avery, the Chronicle reporter who covered the case. Downey came to the part sheathed in mischief, which gives those scenes he’s in a bounce they otherwise would have lacked. He gives one of his best performances in recent memory.

In the end, “Zodiac” is a movie of interiors – the newsroom, the home, the police department. All are effectively captured. But the movie errs in that it closes the door to the outside with such force, it fails to mine any sense of public anxiety; it’s as if these murders happened in a vacuum, which they most certainly didn’t. The film’s interest is in the tireless legwork of the detectives, which in this case is accurately portrayed, though which also is so tedious in the wake of so many red herrings and dead ends, the film can’t help but follow suit.

Grade: C

On Blu-ray disc

AMERICAN PSYCHO, directed by Mary Harron, written by Harron and Guinevere Turner, based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis, 100 minutes, rated R.

Violence as an extended metaphor for something deeper is hardly new, so it’s to Mary Harron’s great credit that she makes it seem new, fresh and exciting in “American Psycho,” her feminist take on Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial 1991 best-selling novel. The movie now is available on high-definition Blu-ray disc.

Mirroring the film’s serial-killing psychopath, Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale in his breakout performance), Harron proves she’s just as adept with a knife.

As the film’s co-screenwriter, she has successfully trimmed off much of the novel’s underlying fat, streamlining Ellis’ rampant use of brand names and over-the-top bloodletting while staying true to the novel’s satirical concept: the greed of the 1980s as realized by an ax-wielding, head-severing, junior master of the universe.

Mixing horror with sharp humor, with graphic violence, Harron explores the truth of what can politely be described as an imperfect man living in wildly imperfect times. Her film is important; it forces us to reconsider the 1980s while also asking us to look hard at its soulless characters and find ourselves in them.

That takes guts, which, when Harron isn’t spilling them on the floor, “American Psycho” has in spades.

Grade: B+

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays and Fridays in Lifestyle, weekends in Television as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.