Mediocre Murder Mystery Set in Alaska

Rating: 4/10 (21 March 2009)

You won't lose any sleep over "Insomnia," the melancholic Al Pacino & Robin Williams psychological murder-mystery. Acclaimed director Christopher Nolan of "Memento" (2000), has remade an outstanding 1977 Norwegian thriller, but turned it into a ponderous, profane (39 f-words), predictable, police procedural potboiler. Although Pacino and Williams usually deliver flawless performances, they act as if were suffering from insomnia rather than their characters. Oscar-winning actress Hilary Swank of "Boys Don't Cry" (1999) lurks on the periphery of this lugubrious cat & mouse melodrama like a naïve Nancy Drew, while Maura Tierney of "Instinct" fares no better in a lackluster supporting role as an innkeeper who sleeps with Pacino so "Insomnia" will have an obligatory one-night stand. Despite its mediocre, convoluted plot, "Insomnia" generates only a modicum of excitement during a couple of nail-biting interludes, but neither salvages this muddled morality play about redemption.
Los Angeles Police Department Detectives Will Dormer (Al Pacino of "Any Given Sunday") and Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan, who played an FBI Agent in "Malcolm X") fly up to Nightmute, Alaska, to help local authorities solve the homicide of 17-year-old Kay Connell (Crystal Lowe) with her boyfriend, Randy Stetz (Jonathan Jackson) as the chief suspect. Actually, the real reason Dormer and Eckhart get packed off to the frozen north is to get out of Los Angeles while Internal Affairs reviews allegations of police corruption involving them. Dormer is a highly decorated, career cop accused of planting evidence to obtain convictions, and his younger partner Eckhart reveals that he has cut a deal with Internal Affairs. Immediately, Dormer fears Eckhart's testimony may reverse many of Dormer's cases and incriminate him. Meanwhile, rookie Alaskan cop Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) admires Dormer as a model cop and eagerly looks forward to working with him.
No sooner has Dormer arrived that he has difficulty getting to sleep. An implacable sun shines twenty-four hours-a-day, seven days-a-week, and Dormer cannot catch enough shut-eye. In L.A., Internal Affairs suspects that Dormer killed. Nightmute Police Chief Charles Nyback (Paul Dooley of "Runaway Bride") assigns Ellie to investigate the shooting, while Dormer grilles the dead girls' classmates. Nevertheless, the accidental killing flushes out the real killer. He knows Dormer shot Eckhart, and he threatens to blackmail Dormer if the celebrated detective doesn't help him frame the dead girl's unsavory boyfriend. As for the murder investigation, Dormer observes that the killer went to a great deal of trouble to clean up the dead girl's corpse so as to eliminate any traces of DNA.
For example, Dormer points out that the girl's fingernails have been trimmed. (If you're keeping track, Italian director Dario Argento used a similar ploy in his considerably more exciting 2001 whodunit "Sleepless." Anyway, the predictable plot thickens with Dormer and the police stake out an isolated cabin where the cops found the victim's back-pack. When a suspect shows up to take the bait, one of the clumsy Nightmute cops alerts him by keying his megaphone. During an erratic chase through blinding fog, Dormer guns down his partner accidentally, but he claims that the suspect did it. Dormer agrees to schedule a meeting with him on a river ferry.
Director Christopher Nolan and freshman scenarist Hillary Seitz wait about an hour before they introduce mystery novelist Walter Finch (Robin Williams in the most muted performance of his career) as a suspect. Finch knew the dead girl, Kay Connell, well, because she visited him regularly and they have many conversations about literature. Meanwhile, Noland spends most of "Insomnia" dealing with Dormer's guilty conscience. Either Nightmute, Alaska, boasts no pharmacies or Dormer is too macho to gobble sleeping pills. Probably the best scene in this dreary detective yarn occurs when Dormer chases the suspect across a log flume. The elusive suspect leaps from one fast-flowing log to the next with nimble agility, but Dormer lacks his balance and timing. Dormer loses his footing, narrowly escapes getting his head crushed by the logs when he falls between them and winds up trapped underwater, struggling to hold his breath until a gap appears in the logs.. Sadly, nothing else proves as invigorating as this scene. Incredibly, before long even the sleepless Dormer begins to suspect that he has deliberately bumped off his partner. Long before "Insomnia" wears off, you'll know that you make a mistake if you wind up watching this wretched whodunit, too.