For Gyllenhaal this is definitely not Apex Mountain; Enemy is offered, an incredible performance even though twin movies are usually bad and that one is triply complex, and Prisoners, with Detective Loki a series of choices; the things disliked in his early performances have become something he steered into, he works hard and made himself a better and more interesting actor, going from hiding the seams to embracing them, with this film perhaps the bridge.
A joke nominates Source Code; otherwise everything after this is found better: Stronger, which came and went this year, is a really difficult performance in a familiar story that did not get the praise it was due, and he is consistently excellent now, so despite the affectations this is a great turning point.
The case that this is Downey's Apex Mountain: people who know him only as a global superstar and brand in the last decade don't know the golden child who couldn't get it done, spoken of in hushed tones as the most talented actor of his generation yet undone by demons and addictions until a turning point around 2004 to 2006; Fincher caught him off Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, another one high on the list, and this film marries the electric comet-in-the-sky quality with a gravity that was sluiced away as he became more of a comic-book figure; Good Night and Good Luck was solid and controlled, but nothing around this suggested he could put together so mannered a performance.
Downey's 80s run is called underrated, with Less Than Zero and The Pickup Artist, and his late-90s slide read as a tragedy because he had been consistently fascinating when used correctly, as in Soap Dish (as transcribed) and Wonder Boys, a film ready to be rediscovered; weighing the larger success arc, this fits perfectly as Apex Mountain for one host, with the global franchise-head apex coming a year later.
Ruffalo is the biggest takeaway of the rewatch and perfectly cast: the Dave Toski (as transcribed) myth, the real cop who was Bullitt and partly the basis of Dirty Harry and perhaps the most recreated real-life cop ever, is played far more subtly than in the other Zodiac films, with the voice and accent right on, the floppy bow tie, pants and trench coat, and a softness that is a radical choice for a superstar murder police who literally asks about due process and is shown to be a grunt doing phone work.
The vulnerable moment when Toski (as transcribed) is accused of writing the last Zodiac letter and gets a call at his house from Graysmith is loved: his wife, played by June Diane Raphael, is outraged on the phone, and Ruffalo delicately takes the phone from her, hangs it up and walks away without a word, jazz playing, in a bathrobe; but it is not his Apex Mountain, since You Can Count On Me is hard to top as where many first saw him.
Collateral is still a thing for some among Ruffalo's cop performances; he was recommended to Fincher by Jennifer Aniston, who had liked him in Rumor Has It, the quasi-sequel to The Graduate, and Fincher liked him in Collateral.
Asked whether this is Fincher's Apex Mountain, the answer is that it is his greatest accomplishment but not his best movie: Fight Club and Seven are iconic and stitched into people's lives, The Social Network is his best and the one liked most, but Zodiac clearly took the most to achieve, is his most personal and therefore most interesting film, though it will never be as beloved.
