leaves a rancid taste in your mouth...but in a bad way

Rating: 6/10 (25 May 2002)

****SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER****
first off...pacino is great as usual, williams is very good, and swank is decent....the idea is interesting, the setting is intriguing, and the plot moves well...the writing was good, and the pace is upbeat....
so why would i give this movie only a 6/10?
the true dilemna in this story is the fact that if pacino reveals what really happened, all those criminals that he justly (and unjustly) put away, will end up walking...this is the factor that is keeping him up, torturing him....so the end of the movie comes, and pacino gives swank this "stay gold" line, telling her not to destroy the evidence....she agrees....
so where are we left? the guilt and drama we are forced to watch pacino go through ends up being moot...all the tension building in the movie ends up being a waste....the child murderer that pacino framed will be released to do it again....his "life's work" is ruined....and for what? so swank can remain pure???? nolan betrays his audience by giving us a corny unfulfilling ending....everything in which we believed over the course of the movie, all we have been rooting for, and everything for which the lead character stood is destroyed...
well, maybe he is setting the scene for insomnia 2: narcolepsy....where swank has to go to LA and hunt down all the murderers that will be released just so that she can maintain her virginal goodness...
dissapointing to the core....and memnto was soooooo good too...oh well...