In another life, David Fincher would make an excellent detective. It’s no coincidence that the protagonists in his films often brandish the fedora and trench-coat (some literally, others spiritually) or are prone to endless brooding as they piece together a complicated world. But it’s not the fact that they investigate that’s so compelling, it’s that they obsess. For a director himself who will shoot 100 takes of a scene, or refine the junk in a character’s apartment to an exact science, or pore over every line and molecule of the script; this storyteller-character pairing is as self-reflexive as it is madly engrossing.

This, of course, depends on how you like your heroes. Some like ‘em squeaky clean in every moral facet i.e. won’t take a nickel off the street, or aren’t above arresting every rule-breaking offender out there including jaywalkers. I like my detectives the way Fincher does, weathered and broken and a little fucked up. Continue reading →