Review of Insomnia (2002) by Kenneth G — 17 Nov 2014

After mesmerizing audiences with the phenomenal "Memento", Christopher Nolan became a promising director as big as Darren Aronofsky. Two years, Nolan was assigned to remake a pretty much forgotten Norwegian thriller film.

In small town in Alaska called Nightmute, a 17 year old girl is found murdered. Two LAPD detectives, Will Dormer and Hap Eckhart, are sent to assist the local police in the investigation. But soon, Dormer will find out what happens when you commit an accident and how far it can make you go.

After mesmerizing audiences with "Memento", expectations for a worthy, clever and intriguing follow-up were high but sadly "Insomnia" didn't exactly fulfill those expectations. The first thing that should be mention is the main differences between Nolan's remake and the original Norwegian film: The remake provides motivation to the characters unlike the original film, and the remake creates an atmosphere of its own unlike the original where it felt a lot like "The Silence of the Lambs". "Insomnia" counts with a very interesting cast with Al Pacino and Robin Williams giving solid performances but both in two calm and grounded roles, which really differs from Williams' over the top and funny persona and Pacino´s 90´s roles. But this peculiar cast providing good performances is not all "Insomnia" has to offer. It also counts with beautiful cinematography, great directing focus on the details, an intriguing cat and mouse like premise, Nolan´s trademark physiological theme and well written characters. With all that said though, "Insomnia" is arguably Nolan´s worst film mainly due to its very slow pace in the first hour of this film and the fact that Nolan didn't contributed to the writing process, thus making "Insomnia" fell like a generic Hollywood thriller/mystery film with very subtle Nolan´s fingerprints.

"Insomnia" is a greatly executed thriller with beautiful cinematography, solid performance and an intriguing plot, despite the slow first hour. It may be one of Nolan´s worst films (compared to the rest of his resume) but "Insomnia" still is a solid film that manages to be better than the original Norwegian.