3 out of 5

Director: Christopher Nolan

Insomnia is amazing, if detached. It is a movie fueled by awesome acting and an intriguing plot, but there is a haze that keeps you one step removed from connecting with things. Pacino plays a high-profile investigator sent to sunny Alaska with his partner to investigate the murder of a young girl. We soon discover, however, that Pacino and partner Martin Donovan might have been sent away to dodge some past problems that internal affairs are digging through. Problems are compounded when Pacino accidentally shoots his partner and tries to cover it up… but unfortunately someone knows the truth, and that someone is also the murderer of the young girl. (And that someone is also Robin Williams.) Now I’m a Nolan fan. The film looks like Nolan, and sounds like Nolan. But something is off. And the actors act like Nolan characters, and are affected by many Nolan tropes. But something is still off. Pacino and Williams are excellent but do not seem like they are actually acting in the movie… but I feel this has been the case with Pacino for some time now and Williams, to me, never *quite* fits the roles in which he’s cast. Swank works perfectly, as does the smaller Alaskan world she inhabits. And the story is absolutely involving, but tapers off a little in the middle and toward the end, once some of the mystery is dropped about Pacino’s past and Williams’ goals… So again, there’s this odd disconnect between film and viewer, and there are several reasons this could be (it’s not Nolan’s script, these are mostly not Nolan actors), but nothing direct. Though, as the plot is about distraction, in a sense, perhaps this was also purposeful. Not a necessary view, but a very solid one, and definitely a pleasing beat away from the usual Hollywood “man with troubled past seeks redemption” films.