If you’re any kind of Zodiac fan, you know that David Fincher’s 162-minute Director’s Cut is the only version worth seeing or discussing. The original theatrical cut ran 157 minutes. The five-minutes-longer Director’s Cut offers expansions in ten scenes, and most importantly includes the black-screen musical time passage sequence.
No self-respecting cinefile would even consider watching the Philistines-only theatrical cut, and yet Cinefamily will be screening the 157-minute version on Thursday, 2.9, in honor of the film’s 10th anniversary. (In fact Zodiac opened on 3.2.07.) There’s still time to fix this. If Cinefamily doesn’t acknowledge error and announce that they intend to screen the 162-minute cut, they have no honor.
A 3.16.08 analysis by moviecensorship.com’s “Frankie“: “The five minutes of new footage edited back into the film will only go detected by either the filmmakers or Zodiac‘s die-hard fans. One will have to scrutinize over Zodiac‘s already-long 162 minute run time like it was the Zapruder film to catch all of the added scenes, which are mostly additional transitional cues and/or longer beats during the second act’s end-run-around of an investigation, culminating in the most noticeable of ‘new’ sequences — an extended ‘musical segue”‘ from the 1970s to the 1980s.
“But because Zodiac is a film about the consequences of details – big or small – about how even those filed under plain-slight can easily slip through the cracks, the new footage serves as another means by which Fincher enhances his audience’s viewing experience, aligning itself well with the investigation Zodiac’s detectives conduct.”