Skarsgård (Pacino as in the remake) plays a jaded, disgraced big-city police detective (Kripos and LAPD respectively) who is flown in together with his partner, to bring the case to a swift end through their wealth of experience with violent crime.
The vicious nature of the killing and the meticulous manner in which the body was cleaned has confounded the local police, who soon realize that they need help. It is during this season when the savagely beaten body of a local teenage girl is found in a remote Northern town (Tromsø, Norway in the original and Nightmute, Alaska in the remake).
"White Night" (or "The Midnight Sun") is a phenomenon in which the sun is still visible after midnight in settlements near the Arctic Circle - in some cases, it won't set for months at a time. Both films were critical darlings, and the remake, in particular, became a box office hit. Try and watch that tonight, too.Insomnia is a 1997 Norwegian Psychological Thriller film directed by Erik Skjoldbjærg and starring Stellan Skarsgård, and a 2002 American remake directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank. I still think that Insomnia should only be shown as the first part of a double-bill with One Hour Photo. It still gives me the heebie-jeebies.Įverything in Insomnia is very well thought out, apart from one moment – when Swank discovers Pacino's shady past by arbitrarily swinging her hands around behind a filing cabinet. I think about it quite often, but only the log-running scene. He sounds authentically sleep-deprived.Īlthough I said earlier that you can go years without thinking about Insomnia, the truth is that I don't. By 2002, he'd spent so many years roaring at scenery that he genuinely sounds exhausted when he's asked to whisper anything. The key to Pacino's performance, I think, is his ruined voice. As you watch Robin Williams beat the living daylights of of Al Pacino, it's not difficult to imagine him taking a left-field Liam Neeson-style lurch into actions films. Williams was a stout, stocky man, and towards the end of Insomnia he channels all his energy into delivering blunt force trauma to Swank and Pacino. PicturesĪnd then, in the final scene, we see a side to Williams that we'd never seen before, but that's thrillingly convincing nonetheless. With all of this going on, Robin Williams is reduced to a kind of glorified bit-part player infinitesimally more substantial than Kevin Spacey's role in Seven.Īn exhausted Pacino and Swank stumble toward the light. And even though her role is thankless and one-note, even Hilary Swank gets to position herself as the heart of the film – embodying all the innocence that Pacino's character has wilfully flung away. Somehow, Nolan miraculously managed to lash down his compulsion for high-volume flailing, so that all the struggle plays out across Pacino's battered monument of a face. The appeal of the film, front and centre, is Pacino's performance as the detective. He tampers with the evidence to remove any trace of blame, and then his world really begins to cave in. It's well told and well acted and beautifully shot, but the bare bones of it could quite easily be an episode of, say, NCIS.Ī troubled detective, Will Dormer, goes to Alaska to wrap up a simple murder case but, groggy from the perpetual daylight, accidentally shoots his partner, who was due to testify against him in an internal affairs case. Even the Dark Knight trilogy – with the exception of its useless final half-hour – was driven by a determination to drag the Caped Crusader into the real world. The Prestige had its film-making-as-magic twist at the end. Memento had its back-to-front narrative structure. And a bad cop can't sleep because his conscience won't let him" – Ellie BurrĬhristopher Nolan films all tend to hinge on, for want of a better word, a gimmick. Photograph: Buena Vista International "A good cop can't sleep because he's missing a piece of the puzzle. Hilary Swank in a thankless sidekick role.
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