Nolan's remake, with brilliant Al Pacino

Rating: 7/10 (9 June 2007)

Story follows two detectives who came into small town on Alaska to solve the crime. Detective Dormer (Al Pacino) accidentally shots his partner Detective Eckhart (Martin Donovan) when they were catching the murderer. But Dormer doesn't admits his mistake and instead of that he gives an alibi. Local cop Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) is trying to figure out what happened that day and how/why did Dormer shoot Eckhart.
Christopher Nolan delivered "Insomnia" after his masterpiece "Memento" and he really didn't left me disappointed. "Insomnia" is remake of Norwegian movie with the same title (with Stellan Skarsgård in main role). Since I didn't watched Skjoldbjærg's movie I cannot compare both of them but I can write some of my thoughts about Nolan's remake.
You can really make psychological profile of every single character and then you can explain their behavior. So, Dormer is old detective that knows everything about his job, but he makes mistake when he accidentally shoots his partner and then cover up everything. Why? Well he cares about his reputation and he also has investigation on his back in L.A. He's bothered with insomnia and when he manages to fall asleep he always dreams that unfortunate scene. Al Pacino played Dormer with perfection. He has a perfect face to act man bothered with crime and insomnia. He's one of my favorite actors and here he shines.
Man Dormer wants to catch is Walter Finch, sick man and a murderer. But Finch saw everything and Dormer must play his game. But are they so different? They both killed and they both aren't good guys. Here we have Robin Williams in not so usual role for him. But he managed to pull it off and he showed all skeptics (if those exist) what he is capable of.
Opposite of Dormer and Finch there is young cop Ellie Burr, the only positive character. Although Ellie admires Dormer, she does investigation and notices irregularity in Dormer's report. She is ambitious and she eventually finds out the truth. Hilary Swank did her usually good job and she's natural talent cause she's not educated actress.
At the end right people deserves to die and Dormer says the most important sentence of the movie: "Don't lose yourself!"(or something like that), when Ellie wanted to throw the bullet away.
So at the end of my comment I must recommend this movie and original too. This one because of Nolan/Pacino/Williams/Swank collaboration and the original because of...(we shall see).