cinematic school of the drooping eyelids...

Rating: 6/10 (7 October 2005)

In "Insomnia," director Christopher Nolan and his cinematographer have a knack for schizophrenic edits that disorient and surprise with regularity, putting a fine accent on an otherwise unspectacular police procedural with delusions of a deeper moral core (some aspects of which work quite well, to an extent). Los Angeles detective Will Dormer (an appropriately somnambulant Al Pacino) is sent to the small city of Nightmute, Alaska to investigate the murder of a young girl, but accidentally shoots his partner while in pursuit of the murder suspect; throughout the rest of the movie, Dormer is racked with guilt (which reveals another transgression years before) and is unable to sleep. He forges a bond with the girl's murderer, an author played with a too-controlled earnestness by Robin Willaims (whose dark side was displayed much better in "One Hour Photo"), and these two actually wind up showing a multi-layered morality and depth that is mature and endearing. However, too many unnecessary plot threads run through "Insomnia," and the script frequently resorts to repetition to pad things out (and at nearly two hours, the movie is already overlong)details about different guns and bullets and who possesses what winds up less clever than confusing; similarly, a boyfriend character is given little personality and just serves as a convenient plot device to take the killers' fall when the third act rolls around. And, after a fairly satisfying buildup in its first half, "Insomnia" unravels the closer it comes to the endinstead of the action and suspense tightening, it becomes as lethargic as the sleepless Dormer, to the point where a shootout ending is inserted (which, despite some subtle closing irony, pretty much jettisons the pains the film took to be cerebral) to wrap up the plot in a crowd-pleasing way. Removing the fog of amazement many critics had toward Nolan's "Memento," "Insomnia" is a sophomore effort that's rather thin beneath the surfacea cinema stunt that too infrequently rises above convention.
5.5/10