Sign of the Zodiac

No one plays naive yet sharp like Jake Gyllenhaal. We saw this in his younger days in October Sky and Donnie Darko, and he pulls off this "boy scout" persona once again in Zodiac as a timid newspaper cartoonist who becomes obsessed with cracking the case of San Francisco's most infamous serial killer.

Based on the true story, David Fincher brings the story to the screen as a complex, twisty murder mystery that draws you in as a spider does a fly. A straight-laced Mark Ruffalo and a scene-stealing Robert Downey Jr. co-star as the two other points of the triangle struggling to solve the unsolvable Zodiac murders, with nice character turns by Anthony Edwards, Brian Cox and a creepy Charles "Roger Rabbit" Fleischer lurking around the edges.

Despite its grim subject matter, the film does find unexpected pockets of humor within the suspenseful scenario. And cinephiles will dig the references to two particular era- and location-specific anti-heroes.

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Link via Imdb.com.