Review of Insomnia (2002) by Campbell P — 11 Sep 2015

Christopher Nolan really knows how to create suspense and realism in his movies. Insomnia is no exception. The film follows a respected cop Will Dormer and his partner as they investigate a murder case in Alaska.

Dormer's insomnia, however, gets the best of him and is unable to function very well after dealing with the death of his fellow detective. The characters are really built together well and have well setup backgrounds, giving them just the right character depth to care about them.

Within the short time of Eckhart's screen time I really liked him as a character. Walter Finch is a really interesting character because of how he is one step ahead of Dormer and is on a psychopathic level equal to John Doe in Fincher's Se7en.

He plays mental games with the insomniac which only makes the situation harder for him because Finch knows Dormer's secret. The best character by far is Dormer because he's pretty much in every scene of the movie and I was really able to sympathize with him, given his constant confusion on whether or not he knew what he was even doing.

As the movie progresses he starts losing touch with reality and is really in no place to be caught in his state. These characters would be nothing without the great cast of the film from excellent performances consisting of Al Pacino, Hillary Swank, Robin Williams, and Maura Tierney.

I really appreciate and love the way that Nolan filmed this movie. The cinematography in foggy Alaska and the wide angle shots of the land are utterly beautiful to look at. The quick shot editing was really a nice touch to put an audience in the eyes of Dormer to see what he was processing in his head.

The story writing was really clever with things like naming the character Will Dormer when dorm translates to sleep, and being able to put an insomniac in a situation like this had to have been a hard thing to put to script and that was really commendable.

The dialogue was smart and quickly delivered and made it all the more interesting to listen to and look at. This movie made me think throughout the entire runtime of how bad it must feel to be put in the shoes of Dormer.

He's put through serious guilt for doing what may be the right thing. Now he's haunted by the events and can't function correctly. In a way he has trouble seeing at points because of how blinded he feels from his past.

It was really interesting to see how it would go down on screen. Insomnia is able to deliver some great storytelling, great characters that felt really real, and built up a lot of really good suspense.

B+.