I’m in two minds about it.
Part of me thinks that it was really tedious but another part thinks that it is magnificent extremely well made film. Perhaps it is just that it’s a magnificent extremely well made tedious film.
I will definitely have to see it again and next time hopefully without an audience that is full of teenage boys who were obviously bored out of their minds having been expecting something more along the lines of Seven or something.
It is wonderfully intricate and almost overly obsessive about the minor details. David Fincher the director seems as obsessive about the details of the case as his protagonist Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal).
I think Procedural Harry is a very apt description. In many ways it feels like the cinematic equivalent of something like The Wire and perhaps would have benefited from the wider scope that 10 hours of television gives so that the lives of the characters outside of the confines of the case could be more widely explored.
But then these are not just characters in a film they are real people with real lives they may wish to keep private, nevertheless I would have loved to have seen much more of Mark Ruffalo’s character David Toschi.
I’m almost certain this is a masterpiece but it will need further viewing for me to decide.
