[Demdike@Cult Labs]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

ZODIAC - Few Killers have played the media like The Zodiac. All those cryptic proclamations and pages full of ciphers must've seemed like something from a movie in the first place. If mysterious true crime is always magnetic, David Fincher's 'Zodiac' shows there's a price to be paid by those who get wrapped up in that stuff. It's probably my favourite of his films to date - I like the way it uses the case not as the springboard for a semi-slasher style enterprise a la 'Se7en', nor even a procedural as such, but to frame a slow trawl through the damage inflicted by obsession. The three principal characters - cartoonist Jake Gyllenhal, journo Robert Downey JR and tec Mark Ruffalo - are laser-focussed on outwitting Zodiac and getting to the bottom of the case. But the case is bottomless, and rather than uniting in the manner of the heroes of a slightly unorthodox buddy cop thriller, all three men fall into despair and ruin, collateral victims of the forever unknown. Beyond all the talk (it's very dialogue-heavy), Fincher's stylistics conjure an air of descent and slowly simmering dread as the film arcs through the shifting seasons.

Does the directors cut add anything to the original cut of the film? I have the cinema version on dvd but not the other version.