One of the better movies to be released on DVD this year.

Rating: Null/10 (7 August 2003)

In "Insomnia" LAPD detective Will Dormer (from French, meaning 'to sleep') played by Al Pacino and his younger partner are sent to Sleepmute, Alaska during the summer to help solve the gruesome killing on a local teenager. For Dormer ('will sleep??') the perpetual daylight is a problem, he goes days without sleeping (thus the title, 'Insomnia') and besides just being tired, he starts to have visions, probably extremely short periods of blacking out. In Dormer's back story we find out that an I.A. investigation back home looms as a threat to his career. The story, acting, directing, cinematography, and the editing are all superb and this adds up to one of the more gripping movies I've seen recently. The critic Ebert has a very complete and accurate review.
some SPOILERS follow, read further at your own risk of disappointment.
Hillary Swank plays the young local Alaska detective, Ellie Burr (as in 'burrrr, it's cold', or 'burrrr, I don't like guys') who happens to be a big fan of Dormer's and has studied his most famous cases. Dormer shows the locals how to hone in on clues, to trap the killer. They find the dead girl's backpack, empty all the contents, re-hide it in the secluded cabin, and tell all the newsmedia that they are looking for her missing backpack, hoping the killer will go and retrieve it. The trap works, but an ill-times squeal on a megaphone startles him, he runs into the cabin, escapes through the floor into the fog by the lake shore.
While in the fog Dormer sees a shadowy figure, shoots, it is his partner who was a threat to expose him back in L.A., for years earlier having planted blood of a dead 8-year-old in the apartment of the suspected killer. Did he shoot his partner on purpose? Probably not, but as the man dies, he tells others it was the escaping suspect, to avoid suspicion, and hides his 'backup' gun. (Later, Burr remembers that Dormer carries a backup, and figures out it is missing, a key to piecing everything together.) But a call out of the blue is the 'suspect, the deceased's favorite author, Walter Finch, brilliantly played by Robin Williams, who saw what happened. And, he claims that his killing of the girl was an accident. He had a crush on her, she was laughing at him, he was trying to shut her up and it went too far. So he tries to negotiate an agreement that both of them can remain undiscovered for the killings each did by accident.
The drama plays out very tautly, it kept me guessing to the very end. However, for closure both Dormer and Finch had to die in the chase and shoot out at the end. As Dormer is dying, Burr tells him she found the empty shell case from his shooting of his partner, and if she throws it away no one will know the difference. But he tells her, "Don't lose your way", as he had done. The DVD picture is among the best I've seen, and surround sound is used very nicely.