the concept of crime

Rating: 9/10 (2 September 2006)

Al Pacino, for all his greatness, has ostensibly played two characters for most of his career - mainly the cocksure, occasionally the desperate. Here though, he plays a character who projects both but is neither; for the first time he plays ambiguity, uncertainty and confusion with a subtlety we knew was there but never got much evidence for. His career best performance as the pulp novel cop travelling a Heart of Darkness narrative (with a little bit of Macbeth thrown in for good measure) is equally matched by the direction of Chris Nolan, and by the actor playing the killer (convincingly played lest you should hear different elsewhere). Memento's memory loss mcguffin is here presented as film noir cliché, since Insomnia presents us with the real world; memories of crimes are not the issue, the issue here is the concept of 'crime' itself.