Movie Review: Insomnia (2002)

A criminal drama set in the bleak snow-covered Alaskan climate, Insomnia delves deep into the disturbed psyche of its main characters, and in the harsh light of endless white nights, stares at the stark reality of two men grappling with their inevitable fate.

Two Los Angeles detectives, grizzled and legendary veteran Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and the younger and more idealistic Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) travel to the small and remote town of Nightmute, in far northern Alaska, to help investigate the murder of teenager Kay Connell. Local police officer Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank) tags along as Dormer and Eckhart explore the evidence. Dormer has more than one problem, though, as he struggles to get any sleep in a town where the bright sun never sets in summer.

His senses dulled by a lack of rest, Dormer accidentally shoots and kills Eckhart. But with no witnesses to the shooting, Dormer lies and claims that it was Connell's killer who shot Eckhart. Suffering from ever worsening insomnia, Dormer is contacted and taunted by Walter Finch (Robin Williams), a local author of cheesy books. The lonely Finch had befriended the much younger Connell and killed her in a fit of rage. Worse still, Finch knows the truth about Eckhart's death.

With no evidence tying Finch to the Connell murder, Dormer frantically seeks a way to bring Finch to justice, while Burr begins to find holes in Dormer's story about Eckhart's death. As they hurtle towards a final confrontation, neither Dormer nor Finch appear to have much of a future, and after six consecutive sleepless nights, Dormer is beyond desperate to close the case and get some sleep.

Al Pacino allows his eyelids to puff up to the size of pillows as he convincingly portrays a man engaged in a futile fight to sleep, and an equally ineffective effort to delay the end of a distinguished career. Williams has a smaller role, but delivers many long-winded passages that reveal the creepy self-delusion of a serial killer in the making, begging to be caught but conniving to survive all the same. It is difficult to understand what Academy Award winner Swank is doing in the trite role of a wide-eyed rookie officer, but her performance adds little to the movie.

Director Christopher Nolan, working from a Hilary Seitz script inspired by a 1997 Norwegian film, pulls out all the flashy tricks from his bag of brief flashbacks, quick edits, bloody details, and fake images generated by a brain lacking in sleep. He creates an appropriately desolate setting of a small northern town with all the grime and none of the charm of isolation.

Insomnia is about death in many guises, with all the major characters facing an ending of sorts: Eckhart is killed, Burr sees the end of her innocence, and both Finch and Dormer realize that they are at the end of their previous lives, and their futures are intertwined and dependant on each other. That all these endings are accelerated due to days that have no end is just delicious irony.

    



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Movie Review: Inception (2010)

A near-future science fiction thriller that is a breath of fresh air in terms of new ideas, writer and director Christopher Nolan demonstrates in Inception that originality is alive and well, and action movies need be neither derivative nor interpretations of obscure comics.

Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) specializes in modern industrial espionage: stealing ideas by invading the dreams of executives. Dom has unresolved emotional issues related to the death of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard); as a result her image frequently appears and disrupts his progress at critical points in his invasive work.

Businessman Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe) hires Dom for a special assignment: conduct an inception by invading the dreams of rival executive Robert Fisher (Cillian Murphy) and planting an idea that will benefit Mr. Saito's business interests. An inception is the opposite of a theft, and is rarely successful, but Cobb assembles a crack team to pull it off. His associates include architecture student Ariadne (Ellen Page), a couple of other expert thieves, and a chemist specializing in dream-related sedation.

The inception operation will require an elaborate dream within a dream within a dream structure, and the whole team may be forever lost in limbo if the plan fails. An extra complication for Dom is dealing once and for all with his emotions surrounding Mal's death.

Inception is both challenging and complex to follow, but in an era of cookie-cutter sequelitis, a movie that demands attention is a good thing. Nolan spent 10 years developing the script, and it shows. Inception has an elaborate structure resembling Matryoshka nesting dolls, with fine threads connecting events happening in several dream dimensions at once. Knowing what is real and what is a dream is a challenge for both the characters and the viewers.

The main heist involves three dream levels, and when things go wrong an unscheduled descent into a fourth dream level becomes necessary. All events in each of the levels are interrelated, and it's not an easy task to keep all the action straight. Nolan pulls this off with a combination of slick editing and sheer bravado, helped by a dedicated Leonardo DiCaprio performance.

The movie does suffer from some routine, prolonged, and unconvincing shoot-out sequences, as Dom's team unexpectedly encounter heavily armed defenders in the dreams of Robert Fisher. The sequences revealing Dom's history with his wife Mal are better, and that is where the film finds it's emotional high points.

Inception is a showcase for some incredible modern movie special effects, but in addition to being justified as part of various dream worlds, they are placed at the service of a fascinating story and engaging characters. Demonstrating an appreciation for old-school film elements, Nolan also brings in Michael Caine for a few scenes to add acting depth as DiCaprio's father-in-law.

Inception inspires awe and head-scratching in equal measures, and the best proof of its impact is that it demands to be viewed again, as soon as it ends.

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