is too long and despite boasting of a talented and recognisable crop of faces, it suffers from wayyyy too many indistinguishable journo/cop characters that end up throwing me off along the way, but it’s still a pretty thrilling movie.  not in the “omg i’m shaking this is so intense omg fincher” type of way, but it’s one that fully asks of my attention and intrigue for its entirety, and one that has it, for the most part.  

everybody knows about the zodiac killer, but nothing has ever gone as in depth as this has, at least to my knowledge, cementing itself as essential cinematic serial killer lore.  meticulously crafted and researched, it had me constantly second guessing everything I knew about the story and everything I was beginning to know about these characters, despite the fact that I could never fully immerse myself in the psyche that was driving these people.  if one flaw persists throughout in here, its that even with the inclusion of unabashedly plentiful exposition, it sometimes fails to go deeper on the motivations of the main investigators and why this became so consuming/important for them even years/decades later after the initial events.  we know they’re determined as hell, but there’s not enough dedicated to understanding why they’re so determined, especially in gylenhaal’s case.  for a movie that is sooooo dense, it falls short on truly exploring the characters to their fullest potential.  but maybe that’s more of a me problem, though I now understand the sentiment when people say this is one of the most overrated “underrated” movies.  it nails a lot of things, but sometimes it’s simply too preoccupied with being too perfect in its rhythm that it tends to lose me more than i’d like along the way.  still, it succeeds as a pretty good slow-paced investigative mystery thriller about said determination and also says a bunch about trying to make SOMETHING happen in a society full of incompetence, especially within the justice system.  feels like something soderbergh would’ve thrived with making. 

btw, this ends on a frame with one of the mcpoyle brothers from always sunny, which was just fucking hilarious to me.