Zodiac (2007)

Zodiac

Zodiac, directed by David Fincher from James Vanderbilt's adaptation of Robert Graysmith's books, was released in March 2007 by Paramount Pictures in North America and Warner Bros. Pictures internationally. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Graysmith, the San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist who spends decades on the unsolved Zodiac murders alongside Robert Downey Jr.'s reporter Paul Avery and Mark Ruffalo's Inspector Dave Toschi. John Carroll Lynch plays Arthur Leigh Allen, the prime suspect the investigation never managed to charge. (IMDb)

Watches

Zodiac Sea Wolf

Worn by John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Leigh Allen. The watch is evidence, and the film stages it as such. During the interrogation Toschi remarks on Allen's wristwatch, Allen reluctantly hands it over, and the detectives find the brand's own emblem on the dial: a circle quartered by a cross whose arms run past the rim, the same figure the Zodiac Killer drew on his letters and ciphers. Allen says it was a Christmas present from his mother. The detail is not a screenwriter's invention; the real Allen owned a Zodiac Sea Wolf, and the correspondence between the maker's logo and the signature is a documented part of the case file. (Montres de Luxe; History vs. Hollywood) Neither the frame nor the case record narrows the piece to one of the Sea Wolf's many references across 1953 to the 1970s, so the row stays at the line.

© Paramount Pictures / Warner Bros.

Timex Electric Model 84

Worn by Jake Gyllenhaal as Robert Graysmith. Graysmith's own watch is the ordinary counterpart to the suspect's Sea Wolf: a gold-finished cushion-cased Timex on a steel expanding band with a wide black centre, its light gold dial marked with plain batons that thicken into squares at twelve, three, six and nine. BAMF Style describes it from the frames and credits the identification as a Timex Electric Model 84 to the Watches in Movies spotting record; the model dates from 1965, so it suits a cartoonist wearing it from 1969 onward. The close-up as he rubs his neck over the case photographs shows the case shape, dial layout and band clearly but no dial text, so the model name rests on that single spotting record. BAMF adds that Graysmith's book never names his own watch, though it records Timex watches on two Zodiac victims. (BAMF Style)

© Paramount Pictures / Warner Bros.