Al Pacino is a scene-stealer. He's been able to make every movie he stars in his, no matter how name brand the director or the writer. Yet, as the screen dynamo force that he is, Insomnia was one movie he could not steal. And let all the scenery chewing actors and all the "I need a close up every five minutes" mongers be warned, for Christopher Nolan is not a director who will easily give up his move to a star.
It was quite easy for Insomnia to turn into Heat in Alaska. Archetypical Al Pacino Role #2, the Guilt Ridden Street Smart Cop, pursues the criminal of a difficult case and in the process immerses his entire well being into solving the case, with disregard to those around him. The dialogue, too, seemed as if it came out of the Al Pacino Handbook of Hard Boiled Language, and the fact that Pacino's character suffers from some massive insomnia (duh) usually is the cause for some excitement in actors (a disease? time to ham it up!). Then there's our buddy Robin Williams, who's a bigger piece of ham than Porky the Pig. He makes a movie his own, in his own destructive sort of way. It would take only a very talented director to veer his movie away from the dark side of Williams.
But neither of these Academy Award winning actors, nor Hillary Swank, is able to take Insomnia from the grips of its auteur. Nolan's narrative and vision is present in every frame of the film. Pacino could have a stroke and start cursing his deceased brother Fredo and it all would have amounted to a mere brain fart in the movie. Nolan is truly the star of the show.
Christopher Nolan must have studied psychology, because his ability to recreate a character's psyche on screen is magnificent. Memento's backward narrative made a confused audience feel Leonard's constant sensation of awakening. There's none of that here, but Nolan, and his trusty employees Dody Dorn (editor), Wally Pfiser (cinematographer), and David Juylan (composer) have just as much fun playing with mentality in Insomnia as they did in Memento. The same quick flashes of the past that peppered Memento still are used here, but now they are like a small flurry of clips that turn into a snowstorm until they finally come full into the light, instead of brief reminders of a man's revenge. As Will Dormer (Pacino) worsens in his insomnia, reality gets trickier and trickier, and Nolan and his crew have fun messing around with light, sound, and editing. For example, as Dormer first begins to notice the effects of insomnia, the everyday sounds of the police headquarters become the source of what could be one massive headache.
The other brilliance of Insomnia is that it's not the clichéd cat and mouse thriller that Hollywood wants you to think it is. This is the movie Changing Lanes should've been hadn't the writers been so high on comic books. The only thing people are really chasing here is rest, the only thing people are running away from is guilt, and there is a crystal clear definition between right and wrong, though it exists in a comfortable grey area. Even the criminal is hardly as menacing as advertised; he's just someone who wants to go back to his normal life after something traumatic.
The OTHER other brilliance is that this is one of the few movies you will ever see that contain excellent performances from advertised "Acadamy Award Winners." Remember, you'll be seeing "Academy Award Winner Halle Berry" in the trailers for X2 and James Bond: Die Another Day. All the actors bring out the sympathetic nature of their characters, regardless of how immoral or anal their actions sometimes may be. Al Pacino, while still his showy self, still is able to subtly bring out his character's sleeplessness. Williams, believe it or not, is actually understated; there's no high antics that people usually anticipate with any Williams performance. He's likeable, even though he still his a killer; in the hands of a lesser director he would've been played as a psychotic sadistic murderer creep fellow. Likewise would Hillary Swank's character been played as an agitating and anal by the books rookie; instead, she's likeable, open for learning, and clearly dedicated to her job. She also doesn't reduce her character down to a victim role.
But regardless of how many Academy Award winners you could stuff into this film, Nolan still dominates over every scene. His shrewd ability to visually express human psychology makes Insomnia the brilliant film it is.