Review – Insomnia

Which is what the people who made this should suffer from. I know I’ve said this before, but once again it applies all too well: they should have spent a lot more on the script and a lot less on the actors. As it turns out, however, we get Al Pacino playing a dedicated but subtly crooked cop trying to track down a killer (Robin Williams cast against type in a thou-doth-protest-too-much sort of way). The plot features the usual blend of cloudy motives, annoying subplots and the like. Indeed the only novel element here is the protagonist’s overpowering inability to sleep, brought on either by his own guilty conscience, the midnight sun of northern Alaska, or both. The locations are pretty, and the cinematographer works well with them. But inasmuch as this is supposed to be a murder mystery rather than a travelogue, I’d hoped for a little more. Mildly amusing