Summer of Sam (1999)
Directed by Spike Lee
Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American Northeast Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another.
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What critics compared Summer of Sam to
Fincher & Vanderbilt may have been trying to pull off the same trick that Spike Lee did with Summer of Sam; focusing on those affected by the serial murderer, but there�s absolutely zero sense of fear from the big, bad city down to the smallest of neighborhoods.
There was more menace and atmosphere in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam , another film about a real-life serial killer.
And unlike, say, Spike Lee’s very good “Summer of Sam,” there is darned little fun to be had in Fincher’s film.
Since "Zodiac" is a movie about the famed serial killer of the title, other comparisons follow, such as Spike Lee's excellent "Summer of Sam," the 1999 film that followed the murders left in the wake of David Berkowitz, better known as Son of Sam, who took New York City by storm in 1977.
The more the culprit eludes the protagonists, the more obsessive they become in uncloaking him -- Spike Lee in Summer of Sam was content to tag his own zeitgeist-defining killer a "sick fuck," but the Zodiac becomes Moby Dick to the polyester-clad Ahabs, and in Fincher's grand joke the Great Beast is revealed (or is it?)
Zodiac is more Summer of Sam than Silence of the Lambs and, for this die-hard movie fan, that proves more distressing than a phantom killer on the loose.
It's Lee's interest in the small moments that makes The Inside Man above average, and his best film since Summer of Sam (1999).
(His depiction of Italians as spaghetti-sucking gigolos in Summer of Sam is also a good example.)
Lee has had his share misses over the last few years, with films like "She Hate Me" and "Girl 6" taking some of the glory from "He Got Game" and "Summer of Sam."