I finally caught up with this solid if unexceptional remake of the 1997 Norwegian thriller, one of the few Christopher Nolan films I’ve never seen before.
Though I enjoyed Insomnia well enough, it suffers in comparison to the original movie and the rest of Nolan’s filmography. His record is far from perfect and he’s made a few clunkers over the years, but even his most flawed efforts bear that unique Nolan stamp that sets them apart and makes them memorable. Insomnia is the only film that Nolan didn’t also write, which probably explains why the movie feels so much more generic, for the lack of a better word. It doesn’t mean however that there aren’t things to appreciate, or make you feel nostalgic for the times when mid-budget movies with an enticing cast were taken for granted at the cinema.
The remake swaps northern Norway for a small town in Alaska, where Al Pacino’s veteran cop Will Dormer is sent to assist on a murder investigation. Even before the endless sunlight starts grinding on Dormer’s nerves, he already looks frazzled and worn out. There’s that old saying about people coming to Alaska to escape something, and Dormer’s got the investigation by the Internal Affairs waiting for him back home. Worse still, his younger partner is prepared to tell the investigators everything they need to know to bring the old warhorse down.
Dormer sets a trap for the suspect but things go horribly wrong during the shoot-out in milky fog, which leaves Walter Finch, the killer, with a leverage over compromised Dormer. I’ve long known who exactly plays the murderer in this movie, but it was still a jolt to see Robin Williams in an unnerving performance as an outwardly unassuming sociopath whose claims of innocence are almost convincing at first. The intense cat-and-mouse game between Pacino and Williams is easily the dramatic highlight of the film. Finch knows exactly how to exploit Dormer’s weaknesses, and forces him to confront his own self-deception.
Dormer’s dilemma – how long can a good man live with the wrong things he’s done – is markedly different to the original film; my own inner cynic suspects that the change to a more sympathetic and palatable hero was at least partly commercially motivated. Unfairly or not, I couldn’t help but think back to the darker, sleazier, morally murkier Norwegian version with its unpleasant protagonist, and find the American take much less interesting. The noirish notion of cops and crooks as two sides of the same coin simply doesn’t have as much bite here. I was also underwhelmed with the use of Alaska as a setting, which on paper sounded like a perfect swap. I can’t fault the cinematography but somehow it just didn’t feel as atmospheric and moody as I’d have hoped.
On the bright side, I found the pivotal fog sequence just as disorienting and gripping as in the original; later on in the film there’s another standout chase scene across the floating logs that makes for some striking imagery. My quibbles with the character changes aside, Al Pacino is genuinely great in a relatively restrained performance, convincingly portraying his character’s deteriorating state of mind as he’s plagued by insomnia. Robin Williams’ dramatic talents are on full display here, and Hilary Swank is appealing as an eager local officer who hero-worships Dormer. Well-done female characters are not exactly a staple of Nolan films, so it’s refreshing to see one here.
There’s a good reason why Insomnia is considered a minor work for Nolan before he moved on to bigger and better things. It lacks his worst tendencies as a director, but it’s also missing the ambition that makes me prefer a deeply flawed and uneven film like Interstellar. Still, I found enough things to like about this straightforward crime thriller to feel like it was worth checking out.
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