A measured police/investigative thriller that values character and tension isn't a genre piece that regularly rears its head in the murky waters of studio filmmaking; one that explores an unsolved true mystery and does so with restraint whilst still managing to challenge and entertain is an even rarer beast. It's with arms wide open, then, that Zodiac should be embraced.

David Fincher reinvigorated the noir-crime thriller over a decade ago with Se7en's heady blend of masculine urban angst and here achieves a similarly high standard of storytelling and overall product. Zodiac follows the obsessive manhunt for the notorious 1960's/70's serial killer from the three intertwined perspectives of inspector David Toschi, cartoonist Robert Graysmith and columnist Paul Avery. The roles are brought to life by the three leads (Ruffalo, Gyllenhaal and Downey Jr. respectively) with all the weight and seeming ease you might have come to expect against the fractured backdrop of a crime investigation that is conveyed brilliantly by Fincher's eye for the shot and gallantry with the CGI.

The ever spinning roundabout of genre dictates that a film like Zodiac, old-fashioned in appearance and approach at-least, is contemporary in its disdain for everything that the detective genre has come to be in our current generation of forensic montages, overblown body-counts and clean resolutions. Hopefully - and ironically – then, Zodiac will set a very contemporary trend.

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