A Psychological Dual In "The Land Of The Midnight Sun"

Rating: 9/10 (4 December 2013)

The unbearable pressure experienced by a veteran cop during his short stay in "The Land Of The Midnight Sun" is charted in detail in Christopher Nolan's impressive remake of the 1997 Norwegian movie called "Insomnia". This well-written and very tense drama shows how a toxic combination of guilt, fear and self-doubt torment the detective and undermine his physical and psychological health to such an extent that he soon starts to hallucinate and becomes increasingly unstable.
LAPD Detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and his partner Detective Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) are temporarily transferred to the small town of Nightmute, Alaska to help out with the investigation of a brutal murder that's proving to be very difficult to solve. Dormer's expertise is immediately apparent during his examination of the victim's body, as he picks up on some significant points that were obviously missed by the local police and the previously slow progress of the investigation soon accelerates.
Dormer sets a trap for the killer who quickly realises that something's wrong and escapes into the fog behind a remote cabin. After chasing the suspect across some rocks, Dormer sees a figure through the fog and shoots but is then horrified to discover that he's actually killed an innocent man. He later tells his local colleagues that the innocent man had been shot by the murderer and some evidence that he plants supports his story.
The local detective that Dormer works most closely with is the young and immensely enthusiastic Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) who, by coincidence, had studied some of his past cases during her time at the police academy. She sees her time with him as an opportunity to observe the way he operates and further enhance her knowledge of police work.
The murder victim was a 17-year-old schoolgirl who it's discovered, liked the books of a local crime writer called Walter Finch (Robin Williams) and when it later becomes clear that they were secretly friends, Finch becomes the prime suspect. The dynamic between the determined homicide detective and his prime suspect had already become untypical however, after Finch had contacted him to say that he'd witnessed his crime in the fog and from that point on, the mind games had begun.
Will Dormer is under pressure from the time he arrives in Alaska because he knows that his previous cases are being re-examined by Internal Affairs officers who suspect him of tampering with evidence to get convictions and his disloyal partner is willing to betray him to try to save his own career. Being under the constant threat of losing his career, his livelihood and his reputation is a constant worry and when he also has to grapple with his conscience about the man he accidentally killed, his anxiety becomes difficult to bear. The fear of his "crime" being discovered (either by information from Finch or by the investigation that Ellie's undertaking) is terrifying and to make matters worse, the perpetual daylight in his new surroundings makes it impossible for him to sleep.
Al Pacino does a fantastic job of showing the mental and physical deterioration that his character goes through and Robin Williams, in one of his more restrained performances, is quite chilling as the manipulative and very creepy murderer who claims that he, like Dormer, actually killed as the result of an accident. Hilary Swank is also outstanding in her part as a smart but naïve officer who learns some important lessons and is discouraged by Dormer from making the same mistakes that he made.
"Insomnia" isn't a conventional thriller as the identity of the murderer is revealed at a relatively early stage of the movie and it doesn't contain many action sequences. What ultimately makes it so absorbing, however, is its account of Dormer's torment, his moral ambiguity and the psychological dual that he engages in with Finch.