Insomnia Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)May 24th, 2002
INSOMNIA
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When a local teenager is found brutally murdered with all traces of the killer carefully removed, Nightmute, Alaska's Police Chief Nyback (Paul Dooley, "Waiting for Guffman") requests the assistance of old friend, L.A. detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino). Already troubled by his partner Hap's (Martin Donovan, "Portrait of a Lady") plans to cooperate with internal affairs on an investigation which may implicate him, Dormer loses more sleep in the land of the midnight sun in director Christopher Nolan's ("Memento") remake of the 1997 Norwegian film, "Insomnia."
Nolan proves he has the commercial goods directing three Oscar winning actors with Hillary Seitz's Americanized adapted screenplay. This "Insomnia" is bigger and glossier than the original, but the Norwegian version's grittier edge gave more darkness to its sunshine-provoked protagonist.
Will impresses local junior cop Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank, "The Affair of the Necklace"), who studied one of his cases for her thesis, with his ability to sniff out motivation from the victim's surroundings. He quickly discounts her boyfriend Randy (Jonathan Jackson, "Deep End of the Ocean") as a suspect, and gets him to admit she was seeing an older man who could afford to buy her expensive presents. When the young girl's purse is returned to the murder site as bait, the murderer falls for the trap, but eludes his pursuers in dense shoreline fog. He does, however, witness Dormer's accidental
shooting of his partner, as well as Will's immediate reaction to pin the killing on him.
After Will tampers with the evidence (which is just what he's under investigation for back home), he soon sniffs out Walter Finch (Robin Williams),
a local writer, as the killer. Finch, however, holds Dormer's career in his hands and dances rings around the guilty cop while suggesting Dormer assist him in framing Randy. They both, after all, never meant to kill.
"Insomnia's" marketing would have you believe that Dormer may have really intended to shoot his partner and that Finch uses his murders for book ideas. Neither is the case. While the original "Insomnia's" partner shooting incident was more enveloped in fog, Dormer would be more correctly accused of ineptitude than murder.
Pacino is much more convincing, if more theatrical, in displaying his character's sleep deprivation than Stellan Skarsgard's take on the character, but the Norwegian actor shows more depravity. The twinning of the hunter and hunted, which made the original such a compelling character study, is missing here. Where Skarsgard's character shoots a stray dog to produce his evidence, Pacino merely finds an already dead one. When interrogating the victim's best friend, who was cheating her friend's boyfriend, Skarsgard's Engstrom makes a play for the young flesh while Pacino's Dormer merely shows contempt.
This teeter to the good of the cop is tottered, however, by Robin Williams' performance as Finch. Where the Norwegian killer was more brutish, Williams makes him pathologically smooth, a man who speaks with warm empathy as the ice that runs through his veins melts through his moist eyes. The pairing of Williams' cool to Pacino's hot is beautifully shown off in a scene in Nightmute's police office interrogation room, where Finch outplays Dormer's every move causing the detective to explode in rage.
Hilary Swank is serviceable as the idealistic young cop who acts as the moral compass in the film, but the underrated Maura Tierney ("Scotland, PA") is better as the hotel clerk who becomes Dormer's confessor. Unfortunately, a wild sex scene between cop and clerk in the 1997 film is only vaguely alluded to here. Tierney deserved more screen time.
Director of Photography Wally Pfister ("Memento") makes the most of rugged locations and delivers a clean and crisp look. His initial shot of a small plane flying over jagged, vertical peaks is breathtaking. The pattern is repeated when Will chases Finch over a river of swift-moving logs from a mill and Pfister emphasizes the scene with a diagonally framed overhead shot. This sequence is beautifully edited by "Memento" Oscar nominee Dody Dorn, who pays homage to the climatic scene of "The Silence of the Lambs" in her cutting choices with this film's ending.
Christopher Nolan's "Insomnia" may not keep you awake at night, but it's a stylish police thriller with a combustible pairing in Pacino and Williams.
B
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