No cure for Insomnia here

Rating: 8/10 (11 October 2002)

This film is definitely not to be seen if you are suffering from insomnia, as the director Christopher Nolan, and Al Pacino do a great job of depicting the complaint. This is truly an example of daylight film noir, as one of our local critics put it. One does wonder whether a thicker set of curtains might have helped, but Al plays a man at the end of his tether in a number of respects. His career is in doubt, he has no personal life to speak of and he faces a bleak retirement. Yet he is tenacious in solving the case. His young local assistant, hero-worshiping him from afar gets to know some of the cost of being a good detective.
Robin Williams plays the supercilious killer (we learn early on it is indeed him and the suspense lies in whether a case can be put against him). This character is really a literary conceit - most crims are not terribly smart- and a difficult part to realise effectively, but Williams, who is good at oddballs, plays him in a low-key, effective way. I usually find 'why I did it' scenes artificial, but here they seem to work.
Hillary Swank as the young cop is all bright eyes and bushy tail but she fills the role admirably as the eager beaver who wants to learn from the great detective. She teams well with Pacino, who's seen it all and can't forget what he's seen.
The landscape, darkly brooding, is a character also. Most of the film was filmed in British Columbia rather than Alaska where the story is set (though we do see a couple of Alaskan glaciers). Anyway, almost all of the inhabited parts of Alaska are below the Arctic circle and don't have the midnight sun, whereas Tromso, the setting of the original Norwegian film this is a remake of, is indeed above 66 degrees north. Not to worry, it seems it's not just the light that's preventing Al from sleeping.
Christopher Nolan directs here in a much more straightforward fashion than he did in 'Memento', but he's good at menace and setting the movie on the frontier gives it an edge, at least for those who see the frontier as a scary place. In fact you are probably safer in the wilds of Alaska than the streets of LA. Not to worry. This is a very satisfactory thriller from the dark side, despite the perpetual daylight.