Saturday Night At The Movies
If it Bleeds it Leads: New Fincher and Something Wilder
By Dennis Hartley
In a deliciously ironic scene from David Fincher’s new crime thriller, Zodiac, San Francisco homicide investigator Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), stalks out of a screening of “Dirty Harry”. He is appalled at what he sees as Hollywood’s obvious and crass exploitation of a real-life case that has consumed his life-the hunt for the notorious and ever-elusive “Zodiac” serial killer, who terrorized the Bay Area for a good part of the 1970’s. (Clint Eastwood’s fictional nemesis in “Dirty Harry” was a serial killer who taunted the authorities and the media, and referred to himself as “Scorpio”).
That is one of the “little touches” in Fincher’s multi-layered true crime opus that makes it an instant genre classic. The director has wisely eschewed the broad brush strokes of Grand Guignol that he slathered on in “Se7en” for a meticulously detailed etching that is equal parts Michael Mann and Stanley Kubrick, and thoroughly engrossing cinema.
The director’s notorious perfectionism serves the protagonists well-they are all obsessed individuals. The aforementioned Inspector Toschi and his partner Inspector William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards, in a nice comeback) are the type of dedicated cops that have could have strolled right out of an Ed McBain novel. Master scene-stealer Robert Downey Jr. is perfect as Paul Avery, the cocky crime reporter for the S.F. Chronicle who gloms on to the case; his “partner” of sorts is the Chronicle’s political cartoonist, Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), who is the first person to connect the dots (thanks to his obsession with cryptograms and puzzles). The nerdish Graysmith eventually becomes the most obsessed of them all, conducting an independent investigation over two decades.
Fincher has assembled a film that will please true crime buffs and noir fans alike. The combination of location filming, well-chosen period music and Fincher’s OCD-like attention to detail recreates a cinematic vibe that I haven’t experienced since the golden days of Sidney Lumet (think “Dog Day Afternoon”, “Serpico” or “Prince of the City”.)
And while we are on the subject of “media noirs”-warm up the DVD burner and mark this date on your calendar: March 17. Turner Classic Movies will be airing the rarely-screened 1951 Billy Wilder film The Big Carnival (9am Pacific; check your listings). Inexplicably unavailable on DVD (if anyone out there in the industry knows why, do tell!), it is arguably the most cynical noir ever made, and IMHO Wilder’s best film.
Kirk Douglas is brilliant as Charles Tatum, a washed up, alcoholic former big-city newspaperman yearning for a comeback (not unlike the Robert Downey Jr. character in “Zodiac”). He swears off the booze and sweet-talks his way into a job at a small-town newspaper in New Mexico, hoping that the Big Story will somehow fall into his lap.
He gets his wish when he happens across a “man trapped in a cave-in” incident. What begins as a “human interest story” turns into a major media circus, with the opportunistic Tatum pulling the strings as its ringmaster. Prescient, hard-hitting, and required viewing!
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