Intriguing Daylight Noir

Rating: 7/10 (14 September 2015)

Firm noir stands as one of the most challenging genres. By their nature the shades of grey characters require a deft touch to produce a relative hero and relative villain among the flawed characters. Contrast that with the slasher genre where one just hires a group of attractive but wholesome looking teenagers and one unattractive white guy, colors a few buckets of corn syrup red and you are good to go (by the way, this is also the recipe for a Tarrantino movie just add way too much droning dialog). Insomnia is good film noir. Nolan uses the breathtaking Alaskan scenery (although like the "The Proposal" somehow the movie was shot on one of the handful of beautiful, warm, summer days in Alaska rather than the other 340 frigid ones) to set a backdrop of overexposure and to sell the central premise that Pacino's LA detective can't adjust to the failure of the sun to traverse the sky. How Nolan got Hollywood's two biggest (outside of Nicholson and anyone in a Tarantino picture) scenery-chewing actors - Pacino and Williams to turn in subtle, nuanced performances is a mystery worth an Oscar in itself. Pacino's age occasionally comes off as problematic in the film as several pivotal scenes require a level of athleticism that he clearly no longer possesses (the famously fit Williams never seems over-matched by the demands). Hilary Swank has the opposite issue, she seems just a little too experienced to play the fawning, impressionable wannabe detective who uncovers Pacino's dirty, big, secret. Like any Nolan film, little annoyances pepper the outing such as the abortive relationship between Pacino and the hotel clerk - they seems close despite not spending any time together. In short, however, the smart, atmospheric mystery is worth the viewing.