Insomnia Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)May 23rd, 2002
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Fresh off the Oscar-nominated success of Memento, one might think it odd that director Christopher Nolan chose to remake a somewhat obscure Norwegian thriller as his first big Hollywood film. Then again, some of the top talent in the biz has taken that same route, whether in the form of crime capers (Steven Soderbergh's Traffic and Ocean's Eleven - he executive-produces here with George Clooney) or another equally unseen European creepfest (Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky). Perhaps it's fear of following a big hit with something personal that audiences and critics might just not get. Perhaps not.
In Nolan's case, Insomnia might be his way of showing he can capably helm a film without resorting to anything gimmicky (such as, say, manipulating time in some daring way). Like Memento, it's a dark character study of incredible intelligence, which is pretty rare for a mainstream film, let alone one released between Mother's Day and the Fourth of July. Both films feature tremendously performed leads who would do anything to achieve what they believe to be the right thing, even though, in the back of their minds, they realize they're no longer capable of telling right from wrong.
Al Pacino (Any Given Sunday) always looks like he's been up for a couple of days, but he looks especially exhausted when his Will Dormer arrives in Nightmute, Alaska. A detective in the LAPD's robbery-homicide division, Dormer and partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan, The Opposite of Sex) have been sent to Nightmute both to help the local sheriff and ex-LAPD cop (Paul Dooley) catch the killer of a 17-year-old girl, and to get away from an Internal Affairs investigation that might potentially free several of the duo's high-profile convictions because of allegedly improper police practices. Eckhart wants to cut a deal to save his own ass, even though doing so will most certainly sell out his well-known partner.
Save the IA probe, Insomnia's premise sounds a lot like Special Agent Dale Cooper flying to Twin Peaks to hunt down Laura Palmer's killer, but things take a fairly sharp turn when, while luring the suspect back to the scene of the crime, Dormer accidentally shoots and kills his partner amidst a heavy layer of thick Alaskan fog. Ordinarily, that would be traumatic enough, but there are several circumstances that make the situation a whole lot worse for Dormer.
For starters, he tampers with evidence to make it seem like Eckhart was killed by the bad guy they were chasing (since it might look like Dormer did it purposely to hamper the IA investigation). Worse yet, the killer (Robin Williams, Death to Smoochy) witnessed the whole thing and blackmails Dormer into pinning his murder on an innocent man. Oh, and there's the little matter of Nightmute being located in the Land of the Midnight Sun, which offers 24/7 daylight and robs Dormer of sleep during the week he spends there (Dormer.Nightmute.get it?). Throw in a squeaky-clean eager-beaver local cop (Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry), and he's got one major recipe for disaster.
The cat-and-mouse game between Dormer and Williams's Walter Finch will make the hair on your arms stand on end, in part due to our detailed knowledge of the film's incredibly flawed protagonist. Like Leonard Shelby, we get deep-down into Dormer's character (compare our knowledge of his background with that of Sandra Bullock's character in Murder 8y Num8ers) and, thanks to Wally Pfister's (Scotland, PA) camera work, we can practically feel the lines on his forehead deepen along with the size of the bags under his eyes (Pfister's photography, though much more shadowy than the bright original version, also offers the best weather-worn small-town exteriors since The Cider House Rules).
Pacino does his best work in years here, adeptly conveying Dormer's exhaustion and confusion (Is the constant sunlight, a clever metaphor for his blinding conscience, affecting his judgment? Could the sleep deprivation be clouding his ability to distinguish reality from hallucination?). His performance, and the success of the film as a whole, is on par with that of Jack Nicholson in The Pledge. Williams severely underplays his role, even more so than he tends to do in his dramatic work, while Swank doesn't get too much to do other than gaze at Dormer with big starstruck eyes.
Nolan's work is more than solid, infusing the story with quick Requiem For a Dream-like bursts of flashback that initially seem mysterious but eventually begin to make sense. His remake is much better than Crowe's Americanization of Abre los Ojos, almost by virtue of not fiddling with the story too much (the original was penned by Nikolai Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg, and is adapted here by first-timer Hillary Seitz). In addition to Pfister, Nolan also brings back scoremeister David Julyan and Oscar-nominated editor Dody Dorn, who both equal or surpass their previous efforts in Memento.
1:58 - R for language, some violence and brief nudity
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