Part crime drama, part psychological thriller - not Nolan's best work, but it's decent enough

Rating: 6/10 (16 July 2014)

LA detectives Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) are sent to assist in an investigation of a murder in a small town in Alaska. Dormer and Eckhart are assisted by rookie officer Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank). This particular homicide case is far from straight forward as the killer has taken many precautions and does his best not to leave any clues - this in part is down to the killer being a 'crime writer' so it kind of makes him an unofficial expert. Dormer is starting to piece the puzzle together, but there is an unfortunate twist in the tale which forces Dormer to co-operate with the killer. Will Dormer be able to get his man whilst also managing to keep his reputation and integrity intact?
I'll admit that this film was a little slow to get moving, but there were several things working in its favour. Firstly, there is the great chemistry between Al Pacino and Martin Donovan. Pacino can do this sort of acting role in his sleep (no pun intended) and his reputation really does proceed him. I'm not quite as familiar with Martin Donovan, but he was good and the back and forth between him and Pacino was top drawer. The film is also interesting from a scientific perspective - there is a scene in the film where they are discussing going to school to interrogate a potential suspect and one of the Alaskan officers says "we can't go now it's 10 o'clock" and Dormer says "So what"? The Alaskan officers then inform him that it is in fact 10 o clock at night even though it is broad daylight outside - this isn't a plot hole btw. This is known as 'The Midnight Sun' and is witnessed in parts of Russia, Finland and Sweden and Alaska - it only occurs during the Summer months. I believe that the original film was set in Norway where the same phenomenon occurs.
Insomnia starts off as a Crime/Mystery film and it does maintain this theme throughout the film. However, once Walter Finch (Robin Williams) is introduced the film switches tone and becomes more of a psychological thriller. I liked the change of tone and found the psychological mind games that Finch plays with Dormer to be very entertaining and somewhat creepy. Williams is great in his role as the psychologically disturbed Walter Finch. It's not often that you can say that Al Pacino ends up being 'out acted' but I really felt that Williams stole the show. Pacino was still good, but Williams excelled in his role.
Unfortunately, whilst this build up was good and Williams character was both disturbing and interesting I just found that once all this was established the film didn't really have anywhere to go. Insomnia plays its hand early by revealing that Finch was the killer - in some ways I liked it because it proved to be engaging and an extremely good psychological battle of wits. The downside of this is that it also made the film far too predictable - why couldn't there have been a few suspects throughout the film in order to keep the audience guessing? There were no plot twists and far less suspense than there could have been. Insomnia felt very clinical and by the numbers with very few (if any surprises).
Even though Insomnia is a film with lots of flaws, it is still a good film and is worth watching (but more for the psychological aspect rather than the crime/mystery aspect). I only realised that this was a remake after I'd watched this version so having enjoyed the remake I'll be sure to check out the original.