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Fresh
off the Oscar-nominated success of Memento,
one might think it odd that director Christopher Nolan chose to
remake a somewhat obscure Norwegian thriller as his first big
Hollywood film. Then
again, some of the top talent in the biz has taken that same
route, whether in the form of crime capers (Steven Soderbergh's Traffic
and Ocean's Eleven – he
executive-produces here with George Clooney) or another equally
unseen European creepfest (Cameron Crowe's Vanilla
Sky). Perhaps
it's fear of following a big hit with something personal that
audiences and critics might just not get.
Perhaps not.
In
Nolan's case, Insomnia might be his way of showing he can
capably helm a film without resorting to anything gimmicky (such
as, say, manipulating time in some daring way).
Like Memento, it's a
dark character study of incredible intelligence, which is pretty
rare for a mainstream film, let alone one released between
Mother's Day and the Fourth of July.
Both films feature tremendously performed leads who would
do anything to achieve what they believe to be the right thing,
even though, in the back of their minds, they realize they're no
longer capable of telling right from wrong.
Al
Pacino (Any Given Sunday)
always looks like he's been up for a couple of days, but he
looks especially exhausted when his Will Dormer arrives in
Nightmute, Alaska. A
detective in the LAPD's robbery-homicide division, Dormer and
partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan, The Opposite of Sex)
have been sent to Nightmute both to help the local sheriff and
ex-LAPD cop (Paul Dooley) catch the killer of a 17-year-old
girl, and to get away from an Internal Affairs investigation
that might potentially free several of the duo's high-profile
convictions because of allegedly improper police practices.
Eckhart wants to cut a deal to save his own ass, even
though doing so will most certainly sell out his well-known
partner.
Save
the IA probe, Insomnia's premise sounds a lot like Special Agent
Dale Cooper flying to Twin Peaks to hunt down Laura Palmer's
killer, but things take a fairly sharp turn when, while luring
the suspect back to the scene of the crime, Dormer accidentally
shoots and kills his partner amidst a heavy layer of thick
Alaskan fog. Ordinarily,
that would be traumatic enough, but there are several
circumstances that make the situation a whole lot worse for
Dormer.
For
starters, he tampers with evidence to make it seem like Eckhart
was killed by the bad guy they were chasing (since it might look
like Dormer did it purposely to hamper the IA investigation).
Worse yet, the killer (Robin Williams, Death
to Smoochy) witnessed the whole thing and blackmails
Dormer into pinning his murder on an innocent man.
Oh, and there's the little matter of Nightmute being
located in the Land of the Midnight Sun, which offers 24/7
daylight and robs Dormer of sleep during the week he spends
there (Dormer…Nightmute…get it?). Throw in a squeaky-clean
eager-beaver local cop (Hilary Swank, Boys
Don't Cry), and he's got one major recipe for disaster.
The
cat-and-mouse game between Dormer and Williams's Walter Finch
will make the hair on your arms stand on end, in part due to our
detailed knowledge of the film's incredibly flawed protagonist.
Like Leonard Shelby, we get deep-down into Dormer's
character (compare our knowledge of his background with that of
Sandra Bullock's character in Murder
8y Num8ers) and, thanks to Wally Pfister's (Scotland,
PA) camera work, we can practically feel the lines on
his forehead deepen along with the size of the bags under his
eyes (Pfister's photography, though much more shadowy than the
bright original version, also offers the best weather-worn
small-town exteriors since The Cider
House Rules).
Pacino
does his best work in years here, adeptly conveying Dormer's
exhaustion and confusion (Is the constant sunlight, a clever
metaphor for his blinding conscience, affecting his judgment?
Could the sleep deprivation be clouding his ability to
distinguish reality from hallucination?).
His performance, and the success of the film as a whole,
is on par with that of Jack Nicholson in The
Pledge. Williams
severely underplays his role, even more so than he tends to do
in his dramatic work, while Swank doesn't get too much to do
other than gaze at Dormer with big starstruck eyes.
Nolan's
work is more than solid, infusing the story with quick Requiem
For a Dream-like bursts of flashback that initially seem
mysterious but eventually begin to make sense.
His remake is much better than Crowe's Americanization of
Abre los Ojos, almost by
virtue of not fiddling with the story too much (the original was
penned by Nikolai Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg, and is
adapted here by first-timer Hillary Seitz).
In addition to Pfister, Nolan also brings back
scoremeister David Julyan and Oscar-nominated editor Dody Dorn,
who both equal or surpass their previous efforts in Memento.
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