'Crime and Punishment', Nolan-style!

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2002)

Christopher Nolan (who is only 32, believe it or not), understands and utilizes visual elements more effectively than nearly any other of the current crop of directors (Darren Aronofsky, who helmed 'Pi' and 'Requiem for a Dream' is the only other current director in his league). "Memento' worked, in large part, because we were forced, through flashbacks and flashforwards, to 'see' and deduce through Guy Pearce's eyes, putting the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of his past together just as he is. 'Following', Nolan's first film, utilizes a similar format, to a lesser degree, as a casual voyeur is manipulated into becoming a 'fall guy' for a murder.
Working for the first time from a script he didn't write, Nolan had to rethink how to incorporate those elements uniquely his into another author's plot, and he did it, masterfully.
Al Pacino is called to Alaska with his partner ostensively to assist in a homicide investigation of a young girl, but also to get away from an L.A. Internal Affairs probe that is about to reveal his doctoring of evidence to put away a serial killer. Despite his status as a legendary career cop, his partner tells him, early on, that he plans to plea bargain when they return, and bring Pacino down. Facing disgrace, jail, and the possibility of all his criminal convictions being overturned, while dealing with the hero worship a young local cop (Hilary Swank) has for his honesty and integrity, you can see he is facing a major moral dilemma.
He quickly deduces enough to create a trap for the killer, but the stakeout is botched, and the killer runs, shooting a cop and fleeing into the fog. In pursuit, Pacino shoots at a form in the mist, only to discover he has mortally wounded his partner. With his dying breath, the partner accuses him of shooting him to hush him up, and that image and those words would haunt Pacino, as he attempts to hide his act, and endure guilt-ridden flashbacks dominating sleepless nights in a summer of eternal daylight in the far north. Compounding the mental deterioration Pacino experiences is the fact that the girl's killer (brilliantly portrayed by Robin Williams) saw the shooting, and uses this as leverage against the career cop, calling him whenever Pacino attempts to sleep. "We're the same," he says, soothingly, to Pacino. "I didn't want to kill the girl, you didn't want to kill your partner. We can help each other, and no one need ever find out."
Nolan gets the best performance out of Pacino that I've seen since 'Heat', as the detective slowly cracks under the strain of guilt and sleeplessness, trying to find a way to capture Williams without revealing his own guilt. Williams is his match, calmly matching wits with the deteriorating cop, and setting up 'wild cards' to implicate Pacino's coverup.
An element I especially enjoyed was that the wild beauty of Alaska's frontier becomes more and more overpowering and Pacino seems to implode, as the film reaches it's inevitable conclusion. He becomes gaunt, washed out, a shell of the confident pro he had been in the film's opening scenes, while Williams becomes more assured and smugly self-confident. But in this film, unlike 'Memento' and 'Following', there is redemption; in his refusal to allow Swank to do a coverup, but to maintain her 'innocence' as an honest cop, he, metaphorically, 'purges' himself, and he is finally able to 'sleep'.
Is 'Insomnia' as good as 'Memento'? No; that film is in a class by itself. But 'Insomnia' is a remarkably well-crafted and thought-provoking film, and certainly does Nolan credit!