Insomnia

Year of release : 2002

Run time : 1h58m

Genre : Psychological Thriller / Neo Noir

Cast : Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hillary Swank

Director : Christopher Nolan

The movie is a remake of the 1997 Norwegian movie of the same name.

The movie opens with LAPD detectives Dormer and Eckhart, flying to Nightmute, Alaska, at the request of the local police chief to investigate the murder of a teenager. They are welcomed by detective Ellie Burr, who is a fan of Dormer.

Dormer and his partner are told it’s the first murder in their quiet town, as nothing ever happens there. Dormer wants to go straight to the police station, and see the body for himself.

The body is full of bruises, old and new, and the cause of death seems to be being beaten to death. Dormer notices the body was cleaned up after she was beaten, to remove the evidence. They come to the conclusion the k1ller knew her.

They go to the victim’s place, and looking through her things, they see she has an expensive dress, and a torn picture of her with her best friend.

Dormer decides to talk to the victims’ boyfriend, as he thinks he used to beat her, and to her best friend, as he thinks her best friend was probably having an affair with her boyfriend and the victim found out about it.

All this time, in Nightmute is always daylight, and Dormer can’t sleep. The reason why he might not be able to sleep might also be that Internal Affairs are investigating him, and Eckhart told him he is willing to cut a deal with them. Dormer is afraid they want to take him down, putting back on the street all the bad people he put in jail.

They find the victim’s backpack at a cabin by the beach (that’s what they say; to me it looks like a river in a forest), and Dormer tells the police to tell all the news stations that they are looking for her backpack, and to put the backpack back where they found it.

They stake the place, and see a man coming to the cabin. They go after him, but one of them turns on the megaphone and startles him. They have to run after him, but fail to catch him. There’s a dense fog, and Dormer sees someone and sho0ts after he switches the gun (I think it didn’t work). When he comes closer, he sees it’s his partner.

His partner thinks he wanted to k1ll him, and dies. Dormer takes the gun he threw, and lies the man they were chasing k1lled him.

Now Dormer is trying to get rid of the gun while also planting a different bullet as evidence.

He can’t sleep now, probably because he sh0t his partner, and Internal Affairs call him to threaten him.

 

One night he is called by the k1ller, who tells him he saw him k1lling his partner, and he’s not gonna put the blame on him.

The two end up having this back and forth, as the k1ller is blackmailing him with the accidental k1lling or not of his partner, and the recording he made of their conversation.

I personally didn’t like the movie. If you’re watching the movie thinking that it’s a Christopher Nolan movie, and it’s gonna have visual effects like Inception or Interstellar, don’t, because it doesn’t have any of that, it’s a movie which could have been directed by anyone else, it’s nothing special when it comes to directing.

The movie was too long and boring, dragging on for 2 hours, when the lead figured out the k1ller from the first hour, and now it’s playing hide and seek with the k1ller.

Another thing I found annoying was that the teenagers kept on smoking in front of the detectives, talking back at them, being very rude, which I find unlikely. There’s no way ,at the time, teenagers had such disrespect for elders, especially police officers.

The movie was shot on a blue color palette.

The place where they filmed was beautiful.

The acting was good.

The soundtrack was good.

The movie received positive reviews, and grossed 113.8 million dollars at the box office, against a budget of 46 million dollars.

Cinema Score audiences graded it a B.

Rating : Could have been a contender !