Zodiac

Grade: A-

The most challenging mazes will have many more dead ends than successful exits.

The most authentic whodunits will have far more red herrings than solutions.

The most illuminating docudramas are roughly 50% docu and 50% drama.

In the late 1960s – early 1970’s, a serial killer in Northern California murdered somewhere between 5-37 people, depending on who one listens to – the police or the killer himself. The case remains open to this day.

By focusing as much on the era and the obsessions of the hunters as on the murders themselves, director David Fincher and screenwriter James Vanderbilt have constructed a complex, disquieting, utterly compelling portrait of a time of innocence undermined by real world events. In an age just skirting the brink of split second wire tapping, instantaneous information sharing and forensic DNA testing, here evidence is dated in magic marker and stored in floor to ceiling boxes, different jurisdictions mail critical information back and forth to each another sans fax machines, and newspapers actually weigh civic responsibility against getting the scoop on rival papers. Fincher captures time, place and mood with an unnerving accuracy that will give chills to those of us who were children of the period, an air of monotone calm betrayed by a sense of underlying panic at a rapidly changing society. Control is slowly, inexorably being stripped away, and men begin to fixate on a serial killer, consuming themselves with a desperate need to solve a mystery and make the world safe again.

Jake Gyllenhaal betrays a stunning physique and inherent charm with naturalistic geekdom, so good at being gawky and introverted one actually believes he is ridiculed by men and has trouble with the ladies. His fascination with unmasking the killer is reminiscent of Richard Dreyfuss’ turn in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” a quest for truth bordering on self-destructive madness. Mark Ruffalo grays right before our eyes as the detective on the case, constitutionally unable to find inner peace without first making an arrest. Robert Downey Jr. self-destructs as a crime reporter who delights in being threatened by the mystery man, his own self-importance escalating the more he himself becomes an element of the case.

Spanning a period of several years and bridging the gap between two decades, the film leads us down several garden pathways and into many darks alleys ending in brick walls. Instead of depending on bloody reenactments to get the heart pumping, the film creates genuine tension and terror in the overwhelming uncertainty of it all. Long after the murders have ceased and the books have been closed, a sense of dread continues to hover over the lives of these men. Meticulous in authenticity and detail, you will likely leave the theater surprised to re-enter the 21st century – at just over 2 hours and 35 minutes you may check your watch from time to time, not to ascertain how much time until it is all over, but rather how much time you still have left. Smokers may suddenly believe it is acceptable to light up in the movie theater. This film will envelope you.

The purported answers and all the questions that remain leave one in doubt as to whether or not the case was truly ever solved. The human desire to move on with a sense of finality leaves much motivation shrouded in doubt and shadow.

In the end, our craving need for absolutes and resolution remains the true mystery.

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More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0443706/

Breach

Grade: B+

Any movie that begins with footage of John Ashcroft can only get better.

This one does. Very quickly.

In 2001, FBI Agent Robert Hanssen pled guilty to 15 counts of espionage against the United States over a period of some 15 years. Shortly thereafter, Eric O’Neill – the cocky, young agent largely responsible for Hanssen’s arrest – resigned from the FBI.

Writer/director Billy Ray has carved himself a moviemaking niche by focusing on the real life stories of flawed individuals and their inevitable falls from grace. Shattered Glass was a breathtaking tale of journalistic fraud, a young reporter who fabricated countless articles and the editor who brought about his downfall. Ray has a striking ability to portray the underlying humanity within his characters, judging but never completely condemning.

Here, in an age of Über-patriotism where the tendency to lock ‘em up and throw away the key Texas cowboy style has permeated our culture, this is no small feat. Hanssen was a traitor, responsible for the loss of numerous lives and billions of dollars. Yet he was also a deeply religious man, devoted to family, desperate for recognition. None of this ultimately matters (as Ray’s very fine screenplay reminds us) but it makes for a fascinatingly rich and profoundly sad character study of a man of great conflict and contradiction. Chris Cooper is quite moving and complicated here, albeit a touch mannered and technical in his approach. He is a mass of contrast – pious and deviant, coldly intellectual yet emotionally driven. Ryan Phillippe is coming into his own, the twink replaced by a thespian, and he plays an up-and-comer with the appropriate mix of bravado and self-doubt. He comes to admire and pity the man he has been assigned to betray, and his polarized obligations to family legacy and family life are as much at the heart of this thriller as the covert operations. Kathleen Quinlan and Caroline Dhavernas are somewhat cardboard cutouts as the women in these men’s lives, one all too eager to bask in spiritual sanctimony while turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to her husband’s political and sexual perversions, the other a bit too quick to forget what her husband does for a living and the life she signed up for, but both serve as steady reminders of the toll people pay inhabiting and segmenting multiple lives.

But the star of the film, and any film (or play) she is in for that matter, is the incomparable Laura Linney, who turns an underwritten supporting player into the very soul of the story. As Phillippe’s superior, Linney is coolly calculating yet utterly compassionate, a woman who has subordinated her life and checked her ego in the service of a greater good. “I don’t even have a cat,” she tells us with chagrined acceptance. She is the truest patriot of all.

The film is well-paced and cinematographer Tak Fujimoto effectively uses broad shots to bring us into the sterile, fluorescent hallways of the FBI. If the occasional cat and mouse cliché or dramatic license sticks out like a sore thumb (O’Neill’s manipulation of Hanssen’s Catholic devotion seems at times particularly contrived) there is much more to be believed than dismissed. It is to Ray’s credit that one is never sure if the film is intended as drama or thriller – sober and unembellished, in a filmmaking age when it is impossible to know precisely what separates a film that declares “this is a true story” from a film “based on a true story” from a film “based on actual events,” it is indeed possible to find truth simply by telling it.

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More Movie Info: http://imdb.com/title/tt0401997/