When most people think of director David Fincher, their minds instantly leap to his more culturally popular work like Seven, Fight Club, and his Academy-Award winning film The Social Network.

But it was in 2007 that his several-year-spanning crime procedural Zodiac was released, and where the director achieved his greatest and most accomplished feat to date, one that he has not replicated in scope or detail in the time that has passed.

The idea to do this film was incepted in Fincher's mind from a young age, as a boy growing up around the notorious case in which a handful of people in the San Francisco area were violently attacked and/or murdered by an unknown assailant. After reading writer James Vanderbilt's screenplay which recalled these early memories, Fincher went to work on crafting something that wouldn't just be another serial killer yarn like his 1995 commercial hit Seven, but one that focused almost squarely on the opposite side of the law - the people tasked with uncovering clues and identifying suspects, and the toll that is taken after years of investigation.

Zodiac opens in 1969 on the Fourth of July in Vallejo, San Francisco, as young couple Mike Mageau and Darlene Ferrin drive around town looking to enjoy each other's company for the evening. From the very start, Fincher gives the viewer a sentimental, nostalgia-driven look at the period through their eyes, as fireworks are going off around them and the sweet sounds of Three Dog Night playing in the background. Stopping in a desolate area , they soon realize that another driver has been stalking them. Frozen in apprehension, their hesitation to drive away while there's time comes at a price as the driver exits his car, brandishes a handgun, and shoots each of the lovers. Darlene is killed, but Mike survives.