Given that director Christopher Nolan's career is somewhat stratospheric at the monent following the massive sucess of The Dark Knight and the recently released blockbuster Inception, it's interesting to go back to his often overlooked 2002 thriller Insomnia. A remake of the 1997 Norwegian movie of the same name starring Stellan Skarsgard, it follows two detectives who travel, on loan from L.A., to Alaska to help the locals solve the crime of a teenage girl's murder. The senior cop, a stunning Al Pacino, is distracted by allegations of evidence tampering which is made worse by his inability to sleep during the Alaskan summer nights, where the sun never sets. Then things go a bit pear shaped.
It's not as tricky as many Nolan movies, lacking the novelty structures of Memento or Inception, or the flashback nature of The Prestige or Batman Begins, but no less compelling. As is usual for a Nolan movie, the film gradually introduces the storytelling elements before developing them in a fast increasing, snowball pace.
Aside from Pacino (on top form here as his cop, Will Dormer, slowly unravels) everybody involved is superb. Hilary Swank get the difficult role of making her naive Alaskan native both a eager student and a excellent detective in her own right. Robin William, as the killer they are hunting, delivers an almost sympathetic performance that's in no way showy or mawkish.
As with all Nolan films it's about a bloke trying to overcome major psychological issues in order to achieve some order of piece. As you'd expect it looks and sound beautiful (courtesy of regular collaborators, cinematographer Wally Pfister and composer David Julyan and plays with all the elegance and subtlety of the rest of his body of work. A great film that is a regular visitor of my DVD player.
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