Review of Insomnia (2002) by Nick O — 18 Nov 2011

Hey, a lot of mental disease is kept in the dark, and that's exactly where Christopher Nolan in his 2002 third feature found Al Pacino as Detective Will Dormer, whose sentence to crack a high school murder has him locked to a town in Alaska where the sun never shuts down. It's really pretty biting how chatty the town's inhabitants get, especially when Dormer's sanity is tested as the mystery vamps to more disturbing levels than to where the case should have easily bred. Soon, Dormer resists slumber as escape to his own nerve.

When novelist Walter Finch (a superb Robin Williams) shows up with.

Unexpected ties to the dead girl, "Insomnia" becomes a bargain too swank to ignore. Like Christian Bale in "The Machinist", Pacino digs into a role that has him questioning evidence coming 'round the corner and meanwhile fighting off a growing disinterest as means for personal settling. The ethics of Nolan's films generally meet at the line between cop and criminal. In "Insomnia", this tired detective is just shouting for someone to please, please turn off the light.