4/10
"It's madness. It's total madness!"...
21 January 2003
Warning: Spoilers
...words said by the newspaper editor who receives the Zodiac's first letter, spoken in a bad-acting style appropriate for this movie. SPOILERS, I guess.

Bad film loosely based on the true Zodiac killings. At first we get a red herring in the form of an overacting bald guy (he abruptly gets angry when the subject of his wife comes up, "She's no good! She's no good, I tell ya!"). But it turns out the neighborhood postman is Zodiac. Zode owns many rabbits, and when one of them dies he tearfully says "Why are evil people allowed to live, when innocent rabbits like Leo must die!". Later in the local diner somebody talks about eating rabbit stew, and a frustrated and sad Zodiac pipes up that "nobody should eat rabbits". The rabbit subplot comes across as rather comical.

Anyway, the killing continues. There is a scene where Zodiac is sitting at a campfire with a woman he just met. She has a guitar, and Zodiac asks her to play a specific song. He cuts her off and says, no, he wants to hear the end of the song when some character dies. So she sings a brief and non-gruesome line like "I've been shot, and now must die"- and Zodiac smiles and starts laughing. It's supposed to be disturbing but is actually kinda funny. This guy is apparently so excited at the mere mention of death, it reminded me of how Beavis and Butt-Head would giggle and manage to find sexual innuendo in just about every word in the dictionary.

Zodiac continues his dull rampage throughout the rest of the movie. At the end he is walking free in the city, as his sneering voice-over says something like "cops can't search me without a warrant, and if they don't read me my rights I get off free!". It's the kind of dialogue that's calculated to anger people who fall for politicians that talk about getting tough on crime, the sort of cliche thing a criminal would say in a Death Wish movie before Bronson blows him away.

Not a hilarious film, but it does provide a few chuckles. Other things to watch for: 1. The lifeless acting of the teen couple in the VW bus near the beginning. 2. The little boy in the park who runs from Zodiac and obnoxiously grumbles "I don't like him". 3. Watch the end credits closely and you'll notice the producers give their thanks to the "San Francisco Cronical".
4 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed