You've got seven rounds in this clip..Make every one of them count!

Rating: 7/10 (24 February 2012)

***SPOILERS*** Sent all the way to this hick town of Nightmute in Alaska to solve a murder case L.A detectives Will Dorner, Al Pacino, and Hep Eckhart, Martin Donovan,are put in charge of finding who brutally murdered 17 year old Kay Conwell, Crystal Lowe. Kay's body was found on the rocks by the lake naked with her neck broken.
It doesn't take long for Det. Dormer to find a suspect in Kay's murder her on and off again boyfriend Randy Stetz, Jonathan Jackson, who's been known for working her over where she had black & blue marks to prove it. What confuses Dormer in Kay's murder is that it wasn't the crime of passion that he suspected it of being. It was cold and calculated in that her body was washed and her nails clipped as if she was being prepared for burial at a funeral home. Still in him thinking that Randy was Kay's killers leads Dormer his partner Eckhart and the local police to stake out this cabin where they think he hid all of Kay's clothes and personals as a trophy of his grizzly act.
With the shadowy killer sensing he's abut to be caught he makes a run for in that in all the confusion Dormer ends up shooting,in the thick fog, his partner Eckhart,to death! Deciding to cover up the shooting Dormer plants evidence at the scene to implicate young Randy Stetz whom he felt was responsible for murdering Kay but didn't have the evidence to arrest or convict him!
**SPOILER ALERT from This Point On** What Det.Dormer didn't realize was that Kay's killer local dime store novel detective & mystery writer Walter Finch,Robin Williams, was the one fleeing from the cabin and saw what Dormer did: Kill his partner Hep Eckhart. Finch whom Kay had a crush on murdered her when she rejected his crude and uncalled advances towards her. Now having something on Det. Dormer Finch decides to blackmail him to make sure that in his murder investigation of Kay Conwell doesn't go beyond that of her boyfriend Randy Stetz! Thus keeping under raps his as well as Dormer's actions, Kay's murder and Eckhart accidental death, that's connected to the case!
We soon see why Dormer was so determined to keep his involvement in Eckhart's death from seeing the light of day. Which at that time of the season-summer-in Alaska is six month long without a sunset. Eckhart was to testify against Dormer back in L.A for setting up people with phony or manufactured evidence! Just like he's planning, with Finch's cooperation, to do in setting up young Randy Stetz! What really got to Det.Dormer more then anything else in the movie is the constant and non-stop daylight that after a number of days without sleep starts flipping him out. It's in fact local lady detective Ellie Burr, Hilary Swank, who's a big fan of his who later realizes that Dormer in fact blew Eckhart away by finding a spent shell casing at the scene of the shooting from the gun he had a Walther 9.mm not the one he planted a .38 revolver in Randy's house in order to frame him. With Dormer now suffering from severe sleep deprivation he decides to let the chips,or shell casing,fall where they may Finch decide to do him in to keep Dormer form turning him into the local police for Kay's murder!
Wild stomach churning and gut crunching final with both Finch & Dormer having it out in Finch's cabin where he's holding Det. Burr who came there to arrest him hostage. In the end with Dormer dying from his wounds in being shot by Finch, who was in returned blown away with a shotgun blast by Dormer,he tell her to do the right thing proving that he not Finch in fact shot and killed his partner Hep Eckhart. And why shouldn't he by that time Dormer, who was bleeding to death, had nothing to lose and everything to gain. First by clearing his conscious in his crimes back in L.A and his killing his partner,by accident,Hap Eckhart! And most of all preventing Det. Burr from following in his footsteps,faking evidence, in her doing the same things that Dormer's done that in fact lead to his death!