Mesmerizing thriller

Rating: 8/10 (12 May 2003)

Poor Al Pacino can't sleep. An LA cop stuck in the Alaskan summertime, the sun never sets, and his body can't adjust. What's worse, he's being investigated by Internal Affairs, he's just shot his partner to death, and the killer he's trying to capture knows all about it. Great performances by Pacino (the bags under his eyes are so large, they need their own trailer between takes), Robin Williams as the conniving mystery author-murderer, and Hillary Swank as the young local cop who slowly turns from fawning to suspicious. As Pacino's character becomes more sleep-deprived, he begins to doubt his own senses, and so does the viewer (a trick director Christopher Nolan used with great effectiveness in Memento). Well-written, not too gory, and an interesting twist on the slippery slope a cop faces when he fudges the evidence to catch a criminal.