Robert Downey Jr.’s 157-Minute Crime-Thriller Masterpiece Is Officially Back on Free Streaming
David Fincher's 2007 crime thriller Zodiac, widely regarded as one of the finest films about an unsolved real-life case, is now available to stream for free on Tubi. The 157-minute film dramatises the hunt for the Zodiac Killer, who terrorised the San Francisco Bay Area from 1969 with cryptic letters and taunts aimed at police and the press, and it stands out for the meticulous, unsensational style Fincher brought to the story.
The film follows cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) as their investigation into the killer becomes an all-consuming obsession, alongside Mark Ruffalo as the weary Inspector Dave Toschi. Downey's performance as Avery, who shifts from a confident reporter into a man haunted by threats from the killer, is highlighted as among his most nuanced roles, sitting alongside Fincher's other work on the same subject matter, the series Mindhunter, in its grounded, tension-driven approach to depicting criminal investigation.
- Fincher's Zodiac is streaming free on Tubi again
- Film dramatises the real unsolved Zodiac Killer case
- Robert Downey Jr. stars alongside Jake Gyllenhaal and Mark Ruffalo
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Zodiac, directed by David Fincher, is a 2007 film based on the real, unsolved case of the Zodiac Killer, who murdered several people in and around San Francisco from the late 1960s and taunted police and newspapers with coded letters. Rather than a conventional thriller, the film focuses on the years-long investigation and its toll on the people who pursued it, and it has since built a reputation as one of the more thoughtful, detailed dramatisations of true crime on screen.
The main characters are based on real figures involved in the case: cartoonist Robert Graysmith, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, crime reporter Paul Avery, played by Robert Downey Jr., and police inspector Dave Toschi, played by Mark Ruffalo. Each becomes increasingly drawn into the search for the killer's identity, a search that in reality was never conclusively resolved.
The film is being highlighted now because it has become available to watch for free on the streaming service Tubi, giving it renewed attention more than fifteen years after its original release.