Chasing sleep

>> Pacino is perfect in the excellent Insomnia

by MATTHEW HAYS

There’s a welcome respite this week, for those of us who’ve been in a state of mourning for the careers of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. While De Niro continues to languish in self-parody in second-rate comedies, Pacino has chosen to align himself with Christopher Nolan (director of last year’s sleeper Memento) and make a taut and thrilling film noir, Insomnia—a remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name.
Pacino plays an aging detective whose glory days are clearly past him (yes, the role evokes what Nicholson did in last year’s The Pledge). A celebrity detective, his case-cracking abilities are the stuff of legend, thus he and his partner are flown from their home base of L.A. to Alaska to help solve a nasty murder that’s stumped the local authorities.

A teenage girl has been brutally beaten to death, and the murderer has left little or no clues. Pacino hatches a brilliant plan to entice the criminal back to the scene of the crime, but the killer (played by Robin Williams) manages to escape into a very foggy bit of beach. Desperately searching for Williams, Pacino shoots into the fog, accidentally killing his partner. Pacino is then desperate to cover his tracks, while also sniffing out Williams. But the hunted knows precisely what happened in the dense fog, and soon enough, he’s trying to turn the tables on Pacino. It’s a superb role for Pacino, one the actor clearly savours (and deserves).

And Nolan proves himself here. Noir films, typically, feature tortured, morally ambiguous anti-heroes haunted by secrets, characters who find themselves sucked into increasingly dark circumstances (or so they told me in film school). Insomnia’s beautiful twist is to have Pacino stuck in the land of the midnight sun—it’s that time of year in the north, when there is no nightfall. It’s a real achievement: Nolan has crafted a noir film (usually captured in night sequences) entirely in daylight.

He’s also done a brilliant bit of casting, beyond Pacino. Really, is it that much of a stretch to hate Williams? After dreck like Patch Adams and What Dreams May Come, I suspect audiences will be up for vilifying the man as both a rapist and child killer. :

Insomnia opens Friday, May 24