A first rate thriller

Rating: 10/10 (20 March 2017)

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, along with being 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.