Not as good as the original

Rating: 1/10 (8 May 2002)

This remake of the 1997 Norwegian film by the same title is something of a disappointment, not because it is worse than the original (which it is), but because Christopher Nolan, the director, is hot off of his brilliant film Memento. As unconventional as that film was, that is how conventional his Insomnia is. This is due mainly to the important ways in which Al Pacino's character Agent Dormer (why didn't they just call him Agent "Sleeper," hmm?) has been softened up from the original character, played by Stellan Skarsgård. If you've seen both films, you'll know which scenes I am thinking about. Maybe these changes are due to American audiences' sentiment that their heroes be unambiguously good, without a dark side. Or, maybe Al Pacino's ego required that the character be more heroic. In any case, the character has lost any trace of originality, which was really the only saving grace of the original film. Why and how this film came to be remade in such an uninspired fashion is beyond me. It is my hope that Christopher Nolan's next film shows a bit more spark than this one.