Insomnia
A Bad Country for Vampires
Sometimes, a movie does nothing more or less than shatter a movie cliche, and sometimes that is enough. The stellar Men in Black featured a scene with a Climbing Villain, the kind of stereotypical bad guy who, when chased by policemen, instinctively climbs up tall buildings for no other reason than to set up the stereotypical Rooftop Confrontation with the hero cop, in this case, Will Smith, N.Y.P.D. The twist here was that the Climbing Villain was an alien, and was able to leap off the roof of the Guggenheim Museum in a perfect example of a good movie mocking the derivative conventions of bad ones.
Something like that happens in Insomnia. There are exactly two reasons to see Insomnia, and one of them is the way the movie treats the Talking Villain. The Talking Villain is a familiar sight for moviegoers, the murderer who relentlessly taunts and teases those assigned to bring him to justice. This favorite source of exposition for lazy screenwriters haunts many movies. Recent examples include the yappy burglars in Panic Room, a talkative Matthew McConaughey in Frailty, and the loquacious Denzel Washington in Training Day. The worst Talking Villain in recent memory, of course, is the loathsome John Travolta, who sneered his way through box-office poison like Swordfish and Battlefield Earth in recent memory.
The Talking Villain here is Robin Williams, playing against type as a two-bit thriller author who tries to hide the brutal murder of a young fan. Williams, of course, is such an unlikely murderer that the only way the police could possibly consider him as a potential suspect is if he talked his way into it. Thus, we have Williams in his very first scene calling up imported L.A.P.D. detective Al Pacino, and all but confess to the crime. (And it’s not too much longer before Williams turns into a Climbing Villain, at least briefly, although this is probably the first appearance on screen of the Log-Rolling Villain.)
The hook to Insomnia is supposed to be the concept of Robin Williams playing a villain and turning in an understated performance. But it’s not much of a hook. Williams turned in two of my favorite performances in the last twenty years in dark roles in fave-raves Dead Again and Good Will Hunting. Clearly, he has what it takes to be a gifted dramatic actor. Here, though, he has repressed his natural manic tendencies so much that his character seems flat and narcoleptic. This is more of an acting school exercise than anything else for Williams, and it’s not terribly effective. As weird as it is watching Robin Williams play a nascent serial killer, it’s even weirder watching him try to act like a normal, colorless human being. It’s a spooky performance, but the less so for being so seemingly unintentionally spooky.
Anyway, the focus of Insomnia is not the Talking Villain, but who he is talking to, and why. Al Pacino has the main role here, a fish-out-of-water Los Angeles detective sent to help a former colleague solve a brutal killing in the backwater Alaskan town of Nightmute. (Nightmute is nowhere near as quirky as television’s Cicely, Alaska, and too bad.) Pacino here looks like a physical and spiritual (and ultimately moral) wreck; it’s almost brave for him to be photographed this way, looking like twenty miles of bad road. He is so drawn and pale that he looks like a vampire in the opening sequences. This effect is compounded by the relentless midsummer Alaskan sunlight, which explains why there are no great vampire movies set in Alaska.
We know Pacino is a great detective only because Nightmute’s junior deputy sheriff tells us so. (That’s Hillary Swank, and she is unaccountably wasted in a Nancy Drew role, and one wonders why.) Pacino is sporting a hideous Howard Cosell hairpiece here. He is talking in an unaccountably lame Foghorn Leghorn accent for most of the movie, but managing to sound weak and frail, too, at times. He is unable to sleep (hence the title) because of the constant sunshine. Pacino’s character ought to be pitiable, but Pacino turns in such a strong performance that he makes us respect the character and trust him a little, despite his evident flaws.
Insomnia is the first studio movie for director Christopher Nolan, hot on the heels of Memento, the best film of 2001. Insomnia is not nearly as interesting or as well-told as the former film, and there are moments when you wish that Nolan would abandon the linear style of Insomnia and fiddle a little with the space-time continuum again. Nolan nods in this direction with a series of short flashbacks, as quick and as telling as Guy Pearce’s Polaroids in Memento, but there is nothing else here quite so imaginitive. Nolan does his best work in using the relentless Alaskan sunshine and lovely Northwest scenery to memorable effect. There’s a wonderful scene where Pacino is sneaking around the back alleys of the town at midnight, but the sun is still shining and Pacino’s furtive slinking does him no good.
I said there were two good reasons to see Insomnia. I can’t really give away how the movie uses the Talking Villain except to say that it’s original and interesting, although the typical Hollywood ending detracts from the movie significantly. The other good reason is one scene, where Pacino is on the phone, talking to the one character he cannot lie to, and telling her lies anyway. It’s a great scene, and the best acting job Pacino does in the movie, and it’s the perfect antidote for someone despairing about the acting craft after watching (in quick succession ) Woody Allen ham it up in the dreadful Hollywood Ending and the abominable performances turned in by all the non-Samuel L. Jackson cast members in Attack of the Clones.
But aside from this, and the one really clever twist to the script, Insomnia turns out to be a bland, cerebral thriller that falls a little bit short of its considerable promise. Insomnia is not a bad movie by any means, but don’t expect that it will keep you up nights, either.