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Insomnia
on DVD (2002)
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| Starring: |
Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank, Martin Donovan, Maura Tierney, Nicky Katt, Paul Dooley |
| Director: |
Christopher Nolan |
| Studio: |
TOUCHSTONE HOME VIDEO |
| Run time: |
118 mins |
| Certificate: |
 |
| User collections: |
Very under- rated films, Remakes - the good, the bad & the ugly!, DVDs at home, Favourite films by my favourite directors, Eclectic-Fantastic, My 20 Best Movies |
| Genres: |
Drama |
| Languages: |
English |
| Hearing-impaired: |
English |
| Subtitles: |
Danish, English, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish |
| Released: |
03/03/2003
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Brief synopsis of Insomnia
In a remote Alaskan town called Nightmute, the murder of a teenage girl has shocked the tight-knit community. The Los Angeles Police Department sends two of its cops--both under investigation by Internal Affairs--to try to solve the crime in Christopher Nolan's film based on Erik Skjoldbjaerg's 1997 Norwegian version starring Stellan Skarsgard. The experienced, weathered Will Dormer (Al Pacino) has nothing in life except for the police force; his younger partner Hap (Martin Donovan) has a family to support and is willing to turn state's evidence to protect them. Local cop Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) is excited to work with her hero Dormer--until she starts uncovering some questionable situations. It isn't long before Dormer finds the murderer--reclusive writer Walter Finch, played with subtle nuance by Robin Williams--but Finch knows a secret that could bring Dormer down. Director Nolan, who stunned audiences with 2001's inventive MEMENTO, here crafts an atmospheric psychological thriller bathed in whites and grays. The acting is uniformly excellent, especially Pacino's performance as a cop on the edge and Williams' soft-spoken, low-rent crime novelist. Because it never gets dark in Alaska at this time of year, Dormer (a play off the Spanish word "dormir," which means "to sleep") is unable to fall asleep, light always streaming into his hotel room--watching him slowly unravel is one of the film's many treats.
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Related
Critics Reviews
Radio Times
Based on the 1997 Norwegian blockbuster of the same name, this masterfully directed psychodrama from Christopher Nolan (Memento) proves that hit European movies can be remade successfully. Intensely gripping throughout and set in Alaska for extra unfamiliar visual interest, this unhinged noir nightmare has hard-boiled LAPD detective Al Pacino sent to a small fishing town to investigate a brutal teen murder. When he mistakenly kills his partner on a fudged stakeout and blames the hunted assassin (Robin Williams) who saw what he did, the killer blackmails him into pinning both deaths on someone else. And so a convoluted cat-and-mouse game begins with Pacino — terminally sleepless from the endless daylight — barely staying one-step ahead in the evidence-planting conspiracy while trying to conceal his own crime. Dwelling on the far more compelling issues of ethical decay and moral breakdown than the whodunnit aspects, Nolan's inventive thriller sees Pacino on dynamite form.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Effective remake of a Norwegian thriller; despite its added star power, it is no improvement on the original.
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