The main problem with David ("Seven") Fincher's new thriller is that the supposed Zodiac killer, Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch), is kind of a bozo, yet the Zodiac killer we imagine, the one who taunts the cops and claims he'll never be caught, seems exceptionally smart. Allen is a pedophile and doesn't seem particularly bright, surely not bright enough to be a serial killer who can't be caught.

I wanted the Zodiac killer, who's based on the real-life killer of the same name who tormented Californians in and around San Francisco during the 1970s, to be more like Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lecter from "Silence of the Lambs." You may have noticed Hopkins is essentially reprising a similar character in the upcoming "Fracture" -- a man who is so smart he outwits the police without hardly thinking about it. That's how the Zodiac killer should have been played. Criminals are usually caught because they're stupid and seeing the portrayal of Allen, you just sort of scratch your head thinking that this guy is probably being outwitted by the buttons on his own pants.

The other thing "Zodiac" could have used was a whole lot more killing. I mean, you see a few of the murders early and they pretty much stop. The rest of the film is about the search for the killer. It's about the procedural parts of solving a murder. The word "jurisdiction" is either said or implied about twenty times and I can say with full confidence that the word "jurisdiction" is not a word you want spoken in your film very often, at least if you want it moving at a pace faster than bingo at the senior center.

"Zodiac" also could have used some focus. At first, the film seems to be about Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.), a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. Basically, following the case drives him to drink and eventually leads to him lose his job. Then the focus shifts to the two lead detectives on the case, David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards). Finally, it finishes with Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the Chronicle who's interested in the case from the start but has no reason to do any work on it until it's essentially dropped by the police department and the Chronicle years after the Zodiac's last letter.

By the time Fincher has covered all these characters, two hours and forty minutes have passed and the main score to the movie is the snoring of the audience.