Insomnia  
Director Christopher Nolan has managed to follow up the extraordinary, unrepeatable Memento with the finely crafted Insomnia, closely adapted from the Norwegian film of the same name. Like Memento, it is a complex morality tale disguised as a thriller. Detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino) has fled the moral darkness of Los Angeles, where Internal Affairs are investigating his Robbery and Homicide Department, for the continuous light of Nightmute, Alaska, where the summer sun never sets and there are only 'good guys and bad guys - it's simple'. Yet as he investigates the brutal murder of a local schoolgirl in this twilight town, Dormer succumbs to severe insomnia, and loses all sense of clarity. When his partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is killed in compromising circumstances, Dormer is forced into a devil's alliance with local crime novelist Walter Finch (Robin Williams), who holds all the answers to the girl's death.

The cinematography, with its vast Alaskan landscapes bathed in eerie grey light, is excellent, and Dormer's increasing insomnia and moral confusion is effectively evoked by hallucinatory visuals and violent jumpcuts. Best of all however are the outstanding performances of the two leads, both playing very much against type. Moviegoers fed up with Robin Williams' familiar Patch Adams mawkishness will be delighted by his creepy turn here as the author convinced of his own innocence - a prelude to his even creepier, career-making performance in the forthcoming One Hour Photo. Al Pacino is even more of a revelation. In the last decade or so Pacino has snorted and blustered his way through one hysterically pitched role after another, but here Nolan has coaxed from him a performance of remarkable restraint. This is doubly effective because it seems that at any moment Pacino might explode, adding even more tension to what is already a highly suspenseful film. This film may lack the high-concept originality of Memento, but is still just as intelligent and compelling.

Anton Bitel, 09.2002