Black and white where it should have been grey

Rating: Null/10 (10 September 2002)

Insomnia is a film concerned with a grey landscape and the grey areas of the characters morality. Or at least that is what the Norwegian original successfully conveyed.
Christopher Nolan's remake seems bound to a script determined to make explicit many of the ambiguities that made the original so fascinating. Everything seems to need a motive in this, as though cineplex audiences wouldn't be able to understand the main protagonist, Dormer's (Pacino), feelings of guilt and and panic at what he has done without lengthy argumentative speeches and a tacked-on possible motive of vengeance. Perhaps that is what comes of heavyweight names above the title - you have to give them their grandstanding moments.
Martin Donovan's role was cruelly underwritten, and came across as more of a plot device than a fully-developed character. A shame, as I felt he could have been a useful counterpoint to Pacino's bluster. There was little of the warmth of his Norwegian parallel, and a later exchange between Pacino and the hotel receptionist made little impact because of it.
There were other ways in which this had been dumbed-down and sanitised. For example, a scene where Pacino shoots a dead dog. In the original, this dog is alive and healthy and has previously witnessed his guilt. The act of coldly shooting a live dog is far more shocking and resonant, making the audience seriously question how far this man will go to protect his secrets. The remake, again, turns this powerful scene into a convenient plot device, with only a fraction of the meaning.
The films ending, whilst superficially similar to the original, tidys up all the loose ends of the plot and sees that justice is done. As such it leaves the audience entertained but not provoked or inspired, as the original's moral questions and ambiguity had done.
Ironically, this remake of Insomnia is less how one would imagine a Christopher Nolan film to be than the Norwegian original. Although a handful of his stylistic flourishes still make it into this film (the wiper blades, the rubber gloves, the clever narrative reversal of the opening modus operandi sequence), his ability to make the audience question the moral rights and wrongs of the characters, even beyond the end of the film, is sadly underused here.
Insomnia is by no means a *bad* film. It just doesn't, in my opinion, do justice to the talent working on it and as such was a great disappointment. Nolan is, on the strength of both Following and Memento, a truly inspired talent and it would be a great shame to see him become little more than a "name" director in Hollywood, when he could be something as special as the next Kubrick or Roeg.