OK, TV-movie-ish thriller

Rating: 6/10 (14 April 2003)

There's a knotty ethical paradox at the heart of `Insomnia.' What is the point of integrity if it keeps you from doing important work? Would you sacrifice it to continue doing that work--even if it meant letting a cold-blooded killer go free?
Unfortunately, this intriguing question comes clothed in pretty routine murder-mystery drag. In fact, it's almost as if the screenwriters planted a single kernel of good idea, and then just shoveled in `Murder, She Wrote' filler around it.
Performances range from good (Al Pacino and Robin Williams) to middlin' (Maura Tierney) to poor (Hilary Swank, in yet another inexplicably amateurish turn) to excruciatingly awful (the actors playing Dead Girl's Boyfriend and Dead Girl's Best Friend, who shall remain nameless, for their own protection). And am I the only one who feels that Martin Donovan seems bizarrely out of place in anything but Hal Hartley movies?
Christopher Nolan's much touted talent with a camera here boils down to a) gorgeous, generic establishing shots of Alaskan wilderness, and b) rapid-fire editing and `subliminal' shots so cheesy would make William Castle blush. Yet another case of The Emperor Has No Clothes.
Still, the scenes between Pacino and Williams in the film's middle section are gripping, and provide a glimpse of the fascinating, `Sleuth'-esque thriller this might have been. And, to be fair, the movie never entirely loses you, even when you're shaking your head at the TV-movie-ness of it all. 6 out of 10.