Same old, same old

Rating: 6/10 (1 May 2002)

Someone forgot to warn seasoned detective Al Pacino that the sun never sets in most parts of Alaska at that time of year, and as result, the poor guy doesn't sleep a wink during the entire movie. The poor audience has to endure director Christpher Nolan's hyper-style version of the effect sleeplessness has on the most attention sensitive of minds.
That's right, Pacino is the cop of cops in this boring and a sadly typical cop movie. But its not the buddy-cop version, that would be too much just one month after "Showtime!." Instead of a mismatched partner, Pacino has one he genuinely likes as a person, which means he won't live that long, and he doesn't. Insomnia's twist is Pacino shoots him, and lies about it.
See, the two of them are called from LA (where all good cops come from . . . or . . . wait . . . ) when a seventeen year old is brutally murdered and naturally, the local police are baffled because no one ever kills anyone in Alaska. While on a stakeout, Pacino runs after the killer (an effectively creepy and all too convincing Robin Williams) through fog that appears out of no where thats so thick poor Al can't see three feet, and the second he sees anything moving, BAM! Direct Hit! And wouldn't you know the luck? Robin Williams sees everything.
And if you had just beaten a high school to death AND starred Bi-Centennial Man, you'd try to get away with it, too. So he blackmails Pacino, convincing him to help pin the murder on the girl's boyfriend; most of those silly Alaskan cops think he did it anyway. And Williams is incredibly effective as the soft-spoken and rational Walter Finch, who writes novels when he's not killing people or seducing jailbait. He's always calm, and he knows Pacino too well, probably because he writes about cliche detective work that Pacino is given to work with.
But there are nice touches. The first few scenes show blood falling on a cuff, and someone vigorously trying to remove those tiny spots. Throughout the film we're treated to super-duper close-ups of that blood soaking into the fabic and staining it; as are those same stains on our characters and consciences when we've comprosmised morality. My gripe with "Insomnia" is that here we have ANOTHER cop movie about cop morals (Los Angelas cop morals, to boot!) and the line between right and wrong.
Don't other people in our great and diverse society question their morals who AREN'T cops and attorneys? Do you have to ride the line everyday to be interesting or what?