Insomnia should effectively keep viewers awake and involved for the movie's nearly two hours' duration.
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After years of doing almost nothing but lightweight fluff like "Bicentennial Man," "Patch Adams," "What Dreams May Come," "Flubber," and "Jack," Robin Williams decided to take a little time off from filmmaking and come back with a new, darker persona. The result was "Death to Smoochy," "One-Hour Photo," and 2002's "Insomnia." Well, "Smoochy" was pretty bad, but two out of three ain't bad. More to the point, this is Al Pacino's picture, and it's his best in years. The plot isn't all that inventive, but the performances of Williams and Pacino in "Insomnia" should effectively keep viewers awake and involved for the movie's nearly two hours' duration.
Directed by Christopher Nolan (of "Memento" fame) and based on the 1997 Norwegian film "Insomnia," the movie follows the travails of Detective Will Dormer (Pacino), a crack L.A. police detective called to a small town in Alaska to help solve a murder case. Dormer brings with him a host of personal baggage, though, that torments him the whole time he's there. Seems his Internal Affairs Department is probing his alleged planting of evidence at a crime scene, and he's got a terrible case of insomnia to boot. The sleep disorder is not helped by the fact that the sun is up in the northern Alaskan town he's visiting almost twenty-four hours a day.
The crime he's looking into is the beating to death of a seventeen-year-old girl by a murderer who meticulously cut off her finger nails and toe nails to hide any possible signs of a struggle. Dormer is called to the scene by an old friend, the town's police chief, Charlie Nyback (Paul Dooley), and Dormer is more than happy to go, if only to escape temporarily his pressures in L.A. He brings along with him his partner, Det. Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan). They team up with a local police detective, Det. Ellie Burr (Hillary Swank), a woman who has respected and admired Dormer for years, studying his most famous cases in police academy, and together they begin to investigate the case.
The movie's plot deals with three areas: (1) the solving of the crime itself; (2) Dormer's personality and private troubles; and (3) the developing connection between Dormer and the murderer. It's this latter element that makes the film successful. You see, not long into the story, while chasing after the murderer in a thick fog, Dormer accidentally shoots and kills his own partner, Eckhart. Worse still for Dormer, he tries to cover it up, telling the other policemen that it was the murderer who shot Eckhart. Dormer is a good, seasoned cop and knows how to make things appear the way he wants them to appear. All goes well except for one minor detail: the murderer saw Dormer do the deed!
Then begins as grim a cat-and-mouse game as you'll see on the screen, and it's never too clear just who's the cat and who's the mouse, as the murderer calls Dormer and begins taunting him with his knowledge. If Dormer goes after him, the murderer will reveal what he saw. What's Dormer to do? He's wracked by guilt, and his insomnia only gets worse.
So, where does Williams come in? He plays a mystery writer named Walter Finch who lives in the area and is the prime suspect in the killing of the girl. He admits to knowing her quite well because she valued his novels and they met often to discuss their mutual interest in writing. He also admits to trying to protect her from her abusive boyfriend, Randy (Jonathan Jackson).
Pacino's character is a man possessed by demons unimaginable, and despite his gruff outward demeanor, he has absolutely no idea what's going on in his own head. He even wonders if he didn't purposely kill his partner because of a deal his partner was about to make with Internal Affairs, and now, what to do about the murderer who saw him shoot Eckhart? For Dormer, it's the moral dilemma of a lifetime. Pacino has a field day allowing us to watch Dormer disintegrate while trying desperately to keep his wits about him. Pacino, more sleepy-eyed as he gets older, makes his character look more and more haggard as the story goes on.
Williams' character, on the other hand, is always wide-eyed and alert, making him all the more sinister and malevolent. He may not have spent a lifetime involved with crime on a firsthand basis as Dormer has, but he's written enough mystery books to know what to do when things are closing in. He also knows Dormer's mind very well, telling Dormer how much alike they are. Finch is more than a good match for the big-city detective, and watching the interplay of the two men is the highlight of the movie. Indeed, without their interpersonal conflict, the movie would be just another routine police procedural, and without Pacino and Williams in the major roles it probably wouldn't have produced the impact and tension it does.
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[release]10513[/release]