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Stay up for this one
The director of Memento keeps the chronology moving forward this time but still navigates the mind to get under a viewer's skin.
By STEVE PERSALL, Times Film Critic
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 23, 2002
[Photo: Warner Bros.]
Al Pacino plays a detective who doesn’t sleep on it in Insomnia. Robin Williams is a chilling presence as a murder suspect Pacino’s character chases in Alaska.
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Tormented detective Will Dormer in Christopher Nolan's Insomnia doesn't have bags under his eyes, he has luggage. Deep, dark, droopy sockets betraying a man who has seen too much and, as the title suggests, hasn't been able to sleep through much of it. A basset hound looks livelier, but probably couldn't follow a trail any better.
Al Pacino has the right, restless eyes to play Will, a physical trait so strong that the actor's occasional feigning of wooziness isn't necessary. Nolan constructs a stimulating psychological drama around this fatigued character, continuing the lurid appeal of his acclaimed debut Memento. Working backward in time (as in that film) or fatefully forward (as here), Nolan confirms he's our foremost thrillermaker, getting under a viewer's skin by the most satisfying route: through the mind.
Insomnia is based on a gripping 1997 Norwegian import directed and co-written by Erik Skjoldbjaerg, a simple murder mystery made special by its setting and extenuating circumstances. The translation by screenwriter Hillary Seitz to American sensibilities is smooth, with only a few Hollywood touches gumming up the clockworks. The new Insomnia isn't improved, but it's still a top-notch piece of entertainment.
Will is the Americanized version of Stellan Skarsgard's Oslo cop in the original, a celebrated L.A. sleuth in hot water with internal affairs when the movie begins. Will gets shuffled out of town to investigate a young woman's murder in a remote Alaskan fishing village, accompanied by his partner (Martin Donovan), who's cutting a deal with internal affairs that jeopardizes Will's career.
The murder investigation results in a foot chase of the suspect through dense fog. In all the confusion, Will shoots and kills his partner. An accident, or was it? There's only one witness, the killer they were pursuing, who sees an opportunity to turn Will's predicament into eluding punishment for his crime. A local detective (Hilary Swank) is already suspicious of Will's story that the suspect shot his partner. Dealing with a devil may be Will's only way out.
But he doesn't seem to be a devil at all. The suspect is a mild-mannered author named Walter Finch, played with laudable restraint by Robin Williams. The casting is canny, and the performance makes it pay off. Williams is a chilling presence matching the arctic surroundings, never too arch or self-congratulatory about his acting stretch. He barely appears until the second hour of Insomnia, when Nolan has established such brooding gloom that not even Mrs. Doubtfire could break the mood.
Hilary Swank plays a detective in a remote Alaskan fishing village in Insomnia, a murder mystery with several twists.
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Some movies would coast on the murder, but that seems more like a MacGuffin as Nolan applies layers of Will's and Walter's respective guilt, desperation and the professional noose Will is tightening around his own neck. Insomnia plays like a variation on Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, as internalized as a visual art form can be thanks to Pacino's dogged performance, his raspy voice always sounding like someone awakened at 4 a.m.
Even viewers who haven't seen the original Insomnia can spot the American cinematic intrusions: Swank's gee-whiz character is pure Hollywood, a Nancy Drew fawning over Will to establish his reputation, then fairly stumbling into solutions, different from the capable female cop in Skjoldbjaerg's film. Changing Will's departmental problem from sex to a post-O.J. cliche strips significance from his interrogation of the victim's comely classmate.
Nolan gets so much more right that those missteps can be dismissed. He taps into Will's overtaxed psyche with fleeting hallucinations and ambient sounds distorted and amplified. The sterile frost of rural Alaska, especially its daylong sunlight defying the usual darkness of such affairs, becomes another cadaverous character, a silent co-conspirator in menace. Nothing is obvious, even in perpetual daylight. Insomnia is a Hollywood movie that feels European, a compliment Nolan won't take lightly.
Insomnia
- Grade: A-
- Director: Christopher Nolan
- Cast: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Maura Tierney, Martin Donovan
- Screenplay: Hillary Seitz, based on a 1997 screenplay by Erik Skjoldbjaerg and Nikolaj Frobenius
- Rating: R; profanity, violence, brief nudity
- Running time: 118 min.
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