BAD SIGNS IN EVERY CORNER OF PROCEDURAL `THE ZODIAC'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

The San Francisco Bay Area's unsolved Zodiac Killer case that began in the late 1960s has inspired many a gripping movie (the first "Dirty Harry," most significantly) and countless hours of mesmerizing television programming.

"The Zodiac" should not be confused with anything remotely gripping or mesmerizing. The feature film debut of director Alexander Bulkley and his co-writer brother, Kelly, it's a barely serviceable police procedural that has a harder time locating persuasive drama than its detectives do tracking down their man.

Since all anyone ever knew about the media-savvy serial killer was a generic sketch described by one of his surviving victims, the Bulkleys rather wisely chose to focus on how the frustrating case impacted the first investigator assigned to it, his department and his family (the film only ever shows us Zodiac from rear side angles; a different actor provides his voice-over narration). That, and casting the always watchable Robin Tunney and Rory Culkin as the cop's fed-up wife and precocious, case-obsessed son, were the only wise moves the brothers made.

Hiring model-turned-"Grey's Anatomy" bod Justin Chambers to play the troubled, fictionalized Vallejo detective Matt Parish was not so smart. He comes off as too dim a bulb to begin with, and as the taunting, uncatchable Lovers Lane shooter grows bolder, Parish's anger and desperation - and idiotic determination to keep the doors at his house unlocked, much to wife Laura's sensible chagrin - register with all the impact of a surly adolescent's tantrum. Indeed, Culkin's Johnny Parish, who is secretly following the case and coming close to code-cracking Zodiac's cryptic newspaper letters, appears to be far more mature and perceptive than his father.

William Mapother and Philip Baker Hall play cartoon cutouts of, respectively, a sensationalizing journalist and apoplectic police chief. There are many montages of TV news reports from the time, as if Vietnam and hippies and the moon landing were somehow related to the crimes of an ingenious thrill killer.

In his last missive to the media, Zodiac asked, "Who will make a movie about me," and indicated that it had better be a good one.

David Fincher, the director of "Se7en" and "Fight Club," has one coming out later this year. He can probably take some comfort in the knowledge that, even if it's Fincher's worst film, Zodiac won't be coming after him first.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

THE ZODIAC - One star

(R: violence, language, sex, children in jeopardy.)

Starring: Justin Chambers, Robin Tunney, Rory Culkin.

Director: Alexander Bulkley.

Running time: 1 hr. 38 min.

Playing: Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: Borderline amateurish procedural about the early investigation of the Bay Area's Zodiac Killer could possibly be guilty of boring audiences to death.

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Photo:

William Mapother, left, Rex Linn and Justin Chambers try to track down an infamous San Francisco serial killer in ``The Zodiac.''