Insomnia (2002)

Too much of everything

Awesome Movie

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Nolan's only directorial feature for which he does not also receive a writing credit is thankfully a well-conceived and well-written detective thriller, based upon the 1997 Swedish film of the same name. 'Insomnia (2002)' manages to use its unique setting and unconventional set-up to take the story in unexpected directions. The characters are all nicely drawn, both the protagonist and antagonist - played to perfection by the late Robin Williams - are extremely multi-dimensional and nuanced, and the feature is compelling throughout. It's easy to see why Nolan though this worthy of his time. 7/10

Insomnia is directed by Christopher Nolan and was released in the year 2002. Walter Finch is the antagonist of the movie and is portrayed by Robin Williams. He is a really calm and cool villain who is always one step ahead of the hero, Will Domer (Al Pacino). Don't trust him by his innocent looks as he is capable of doing much harm that you can't even imagine. Even though Insomnia remains as one of the most underrated works of Nolan till date, Walter Finch is definitely one of the finest villains ever in the movies.Instead of darkness and shadow, the movie takes place in unforgiving, continuous brightness, the 24-hour daylight of a small town in Alaska in the summer months, where a teenage girl has been discovered beaten to death, her body showing signs of ritual killing. A grizzled LA detective is brought in to show the local cops how to take down a villain this scary – a detective who has accepted this godforsaken assignment because he is in trouble with the Internal Affairs department back in the big city. His investigation goes horrifically wrong and his bad conscience, his festering awareness of career mortality and his screwed-up circadian rhythms mean that he is driven slowly mad with sleep deprivation: a kind of fatal familial insomnia of the soul.Only those people who don't suffer from insomnia have the luxury of thinking it's a disturbing metaphor – when the simple physical condition itself is what is truly disturbing. So Al Pacino is inspired casting as the haggard detective Will Dormer, the policeman with the world's most ironic name. Nolan contrives a weirdly Inception dream- like chase between the two men across logs on a freezing river, and also sets up some terrific, Michael Mann-style head-to-head clashes as Dormer tells the creepy writer exactly what he thinks of him. "You have no motivation," snarls Pacino, You're about as mysterious to me as a blocked toilet is to a f*%king plumber!"

Al Pacino is one of the greatest character actors in the past 40 years, and while not every one of his films have been met with the same level of success, he still tries to give it his all regardless. His performance in 'Insomnia' is a good example of this.The film finds him as an LAPD detective who is nearing retirement and is called up to investigate a murder of a teen in a small Alaska town where there is 24 hours of sunlight for months at a time. The premise itself is really intriguing, and with an all-star supporting cast of Hilary Swank and Robin Williams, it's hard to go wrong. That said, the execution of 'Insomnia' is a bit clunky, as the screenplay is a major letdown. The twist is pretty easy to spot from a mile away regardless of the curve balls that are thrown into the mix. Also, it's hard to take Williams seriously in a serious role, considering he always shined when dishing out one-liners in comedies.Still, there's plenty to like about 'Insomnia.' For one, the setting in the wilderness of Alaska (or, British Columbia, to be more accurate) is a nice change from the cityscapes we're used to seeing in these kinds of thrillers, and the inner battles that Pacino's character fights while in the midst of everything else adds another dynamic to things, in addition to the lack of sleep in the midnight sun that causes even more chaos.'Insomnia' is not Christopher Nolan's best directing effort, but his signature style comes through in the thriller and it's worth a watch.

This movie is arguably one of the best murder mystery movies I have seen since "Laura" (1944), "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), and many of Alfred Hitchcock's movies, as well as being one of the best movies that Christopher Nolan ever directed, as well as one of the police movies that I have ever seen. The movie stars Al Pacino as William Dormer a Los Angeles a detective on the force for 30 years (and couldn't sleep) whose partner is a young detective named Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) who are sent up to Alaska to help a local police department in a small town called Nightmute in order to solve the case of the murder of a teenage girl. As soon as Dormer and his partner arrive they meet a young police detective who happens to be a big fan of Detective Dormer's work named Ellie Burns (Hilary Swank). Dormer also happens to be a good friend of the police chief there whose last name is Nyback (Paul Dooley). As soon as they get there things start kicking up to speed, the policemen/women find the supposed killer in the fog but weren't able to get him and as a result Dormer's partner dies under strange circumstances. During that case Dormer meets a crime novelist named Walter Finch (Robin Williams) who claims that he killed the girl and that Dormer killed his partner. Pacino, Williams, and Swank really deserved Oscar nominations for their excellent work in this movie, and it is also worth noting that Pacino played an LA cop in 1995's "Heat" that was another great performance but he had to deal with another acting titan in Robert De Niro.The movie isn't the best movie that Christopher Nolan directed but it is movies like this that are the reason why I consider him to be the modern version of Alfred Hitchcock, Nolan would eventually direct great films like "Batman Begins" (2005), "The Dark Knight" (2008), "Inception" (2010), "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012), and "Interstellar" (2014) all of those films were masterpieces and this one is right up there with them. I was very impressed with this movie, especially with Hillary Seitz's screenplay that wasn't adapted from anything but man did it work. The movie was brilliantly executed, and is one of 2002's very best films.