Insomnia: Christopher Nolan does it again!

Cafe Society
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First off, Christopher Nolan is one of my biggest influences when it comes to film and screenwriting. With films such as Following and Memento, both of which reached cult following levals, he is well on his way to a succesfull Hollywood career. Then, today came, his 3rd film was released, Insomnia. Based on a 1997 Norwegian film written by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjærg, Insomnia is a true work of art in the world of film.

Christopher Nolan takes all that was the 1997 film, and brings it to the next leval, using his own style of dirrecting, a musical score with shades of Memento, and an all star cast. Al Pacino and Robin Williams pulls out the greatest performances of their careers in the past decade, if not in their ENTIRE careers in my eyes.

Pacino once again excells in the role of master dective, while Williams takes this chance to show his “dark side”, and he does it damn well. I can only hope that this is a rebirth of Robin Williams, and as it stands with his upcoming film One Hour Photo (which he once again plays a dark, psychotic role), it seems to be just that! Hilary Swank also pulls out what IS the greatest role of her career.

Insomnia brings you in as an audiance, with it’s perfectly woven plot, with a Film Noir feel to it, just as Nolan’s first two films. It is a roller coster ride of drama and suspense as you watch Al Pacino from the very begining unravel, and the rest of the story and his past catches up with him. I can not say much more about it, as I do not wish to spoil anything about if for you, but I do want to say this…

…go see it, right now, and enjoy. If you love crime/mystery/drama films with that wonderful Film Noir feel to it, you will love this film. If that isn’t your thing, then the performances of the three main actors are worth the price of a ticket in itself.

Finally I just want to say, that Insomnia proves once and for all that Christopher Nolan will indeed be a force to recon with in Hollywood. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…

…Christopher Nolan is well on his way to becoming the Hollywood legend which he proves he is capable of becoming.

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Hi Brent, welcome to Straightdope, BrentLumpkin.

I see that you have done movie reviews before, although I haven’t recall anyone recommending going on recconaissaince with a director before.

Also, if you are revealing plot points, you should put Spoiler warnings on the title of your thread or in your post. Anyway, welcome aboard.

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Thanks for the welcome capacitor, it is appriciated! Anyhow, back to the topic, lol…

…normaly I wouldn’t recomend a film so highly, on the director, but with Nolan it is different, at least in my eyes. For him to be “new” to this business, and being so young, it is outstanding what he has presented for all of us to see up to this point. Also, I wouldn’t call what I did “revealing plot points”, or spoiling anything, because right from the outset of the film, it goes right into all that I said. The basis is indeed surrounded about the psychology of Al Pacino’s character, that is the main point of the film, and it is very obvious right from the begining. :slight_smile:

If you, or anyone else, hasn’t seen it yet, get out and do it! Put the “popcorn Summer blockbusters” aside and go see a true film, a true “thinking film”.

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Saw it tonight. I didn’t like it as much as I liked Memento, but damn, I don’t think I enjoy breathing as much as I enjoyed Memento.

First off, Christopher Nolan is my new favorite director as well. I had to see one more film of his to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, but he really knocked Insomnia out of the park.

Heck, if the movie would have been two hours of scenery I would have been happy. The setting in Alaska was amazing: both breathtaking and ominous at once.

The cast was great too. Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hillary Swank, Nicky Katt, Maura Tierney, etc were all excellent.

I won’t say anything about the plot, because anything that won’t spoil it you can already read elsewhere.

Go see this movie now! Don’t worry, we won’t post anything interesting while you’re out. :smiley:

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Whoops - I forgot to mention, is Following worth tracking down? I saw the preview for it on the Memento DVD, but I haven’t seen it in the video stores to rent. I usually don’t blindly buy movies, but I may have to with this one.

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Following is an excellent film. It has the nonlinear time of Memento (or, I should say, has multiple time sequences that run linearly. Kind of hard to explain.) It’s not a long film, but doesn’t need to be.

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I saw it yesterday and enjoyed. Pacino’s performance was probably his best in years and Robin Williams finally didn’t suck. However, I still have to recommend the original over the remake.

[spoiler]Although both Pacino’s and Stellan Skarsgård’s portrayals of the the detective occupy a sort of moral grey zone, Pacino’s motivations are explicitly spelled out while Skarsgård’s remain ambiguous. Pacino’s detective is essentially a good man who took a turn down the wrong path. We see no such explanations for Skarsgård’s character. A telling change in the North American version is when Pacino rushes to the kid’s apartment to find the gun. In the original, it was Skarsgård who planted the gun in the first place. Another change was when Pacino shoots a dead dog to retreive the bullet. The dog was alive when Skarsgård shot it. I think these changes soften Pacino’s character for North American audiences but reduce the impact that the original had.

The biggest change was at the end. In the North American version, both the detective and the killer die. Pacino even achieves a sort of redemption by not allowing Hillary Swank’s character to destroy evidence. He stopped her from making the same bad choices he’d made. In the original, not only does Skarsgård get away with it in the end, but the female detective lets him. The final shot of Skarsgård driving away home through a tunnel zooms in on his eyes which start to glow under the weird flourescent lighting. The image is very haunting and you just know that he’s never going to sleep again.[/spoiler]

Of course, taken on its own, this version is still a very good mainstream psychological thriller and, to be honest, a welcome relief from the braindead dreck filling the multiplexes nowadays.

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I just saw it. In a near empty theater on a friday night.

It had lovely scenery. That’s about all I can say about it.
A small Alaskan city is not going to call for help to Los Angeles after finding 1 body. A murder which wouldn’t have been that hard to solve, BTW. Why didn’t they call the state police? And LAPD would not have sent 2 detectives to a place where they would have no juristiction. It’s not like they have personell to spare. We’ve got murders of our own.

And Hilary Swank’s " I studied your cases at the Acadamy" scene seemed cliche’.

If they’d of made it 3 or 4 dead bodies, and FBI rather than LAPD, I could have suspended my disbelief. But I doubt I would have cared anymore aboutthe characters.

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Umm… Wasnt the whole IS crackdown the reason they sent Pacino to Alaska. It wasnt so much they needed the manpower as they need a nice safe place that Pacino could stay outside of the reach of the LA beurocracy.