SPOILERS SPOIERS SPOILERS Don't read if you haven'...

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2002)

SPOILERS SPOIERS SPOILERS Don't read if you haven't > seen it yet.
Some viewers seem to be missing the point of this movie. The central conflict is NOT Pacino vs. Williams and the girl's murder. We know Finch did it. It's in the trailer. Finch admits it. The conflict is Pacino's life, the choices he has made in the past and how it all catches up with him.
Pacino's a semi-crooked cop. He wants to play by the rules, but he can't. It's too tough to get convictions. So he manipulates evidence the ultimate no-no for a detective. He tells us of one instance in the past the one he's being investigated for but how many more may he be hiding? After all, he's doing the same thing with Finch. Trying to plant the gun and distort the facts so that Finch will get caught, because he knows Finch did it, and there's not enough real evidence. But Finch is trying to frame the kid, with Pacino's complicity it's all beautifully complex and agonizing for all the central characters.
A fascinating cat and mouse game with everybody having everything to lose.
So in the end, when Pacino whispers to Swank "Don't lose your way" (I believe this is what he says, it's hard to hear), he's atoning for his past sins. He doesn't want her to fall into the same trap his life has become. It's destroyed his life, his morals, and his mind.
The movie is a psychological portrait of a tortured soul, and Pacino probably deserves an Oscar for how brilliantly he draws us into his conflicted state, much of the time just with the expressions on his face. Williams too, for conning us into feeling sorry for him initially it was an accident, just like you, Will  and then showing us the depraved sicko he really is, first in glimpses, then in a climax of desperate violence.
And Swank what an awful turnabout she has to endure. Her hero has fallen to the level of scumbag. What does she do? Squeal on a fellow cop? Keep his secrets?
The success of this movie is the moods, the suspense, the torturous plot twists, the way Nolan captures the imprisonment of Pacino's insomniac state and uses it as a metaphor for his "awakening" to the living hell his life has become. It's a 10 on everybody's part.