Insomnia

Released by: Warner Brothers
Released on: July 13, 2010.
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hillary Swank
Year: 2002
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The Movie:

One of a few thrillers Christopher Nolan made that will probably always linger in the shadows of the Batman films that propelled him to the top of Hollywood's directorial elite, Insomnia, a remake of Erik Skjoldbjí¦rg's 1997 Norwegian thriller of the same name, is just as good as anything else the director has been responsible so far in his career.

Set in the town of Nightmute, Alaska, the film begins when a teenage girl named Kay Connell is found dead, the victim of murder. The town's chief of police calls in a favor with two LAPD homicide detectives, Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), and soon they're whisked off to Alaska to help with the investigation. On the surface, this all seems well and good, but things get complicated when the pair chase their suspect, Walter Finch (Robin Williams) and Dormer winds up accidently shooting Eckhart by mistake. If killing his partner wasn't bad enough, Dormer, currently under investigation by the Internal Affairs department, knows that t his could very well bring him down, particularly because Eckhart was cooperating with them.

Not sure what else to do, Dormer, who roams around at night as he suffers from insomnia, pins the shooting on Finch, but Finch saw exactly what happened. He contacts Dormer, in hopes that they can work something out and further develop the bond that Finch feels with the troubled officer, but a young Alaskan cop named Ellie Burr (Hillary Swank), is starting to put two and two together.

Insomnia is a really well shot film, taking full cinematic advantage of the Alaskan locations and the somber atmosphere they're able to provide. Shot with an eye for earth tones rather than pop art style color schemes, the film is as bleak looking as its subject matter would imply. At the center of all of this are two great performances from Pacino and an unlikely Robin Williams. Equally interesting characters, and birds of a feather in more ways than one, they play their parts with believability and don't bother with the type of scenery chewing that both actors have occasionally been found guilty of. Pacino's Dormer is a fascinating character and we learn just enough about him to make him interesting to us while at the same time, the script is clever enough to keep us guessing about some of his traits and motivations. Likewise, Finch's character, seemingly a little off his rocker, is clever enough that we can believe he'd be able to accomplish what he does in the film even if it takes a good hour for the movie to really catch up with him. Williams is great in the part, his performance is effectively chilling and as such, quite memorable. The rest of the cast are decent enough in their supporting roles, but it's Pacino and Williams who stand out here.

Ultimately the story is taut and suspenseful, managing to hold out interest through to the very end, while the direction is strong, controlled and confident. Throw that together with some great camerawork and two nearly perfect lead performances, and it's easy to see how and why Insomnia remains a high point in Nolan's career.

Video/Audio/Extras:

The 2.40.1 AVC encoded 1080p high definition anamorphic widescreen transfer on this release from Warner Brothers is pretty impressive. The image is consistently film-like and very detailed throughout, showing great, natural looking color reproduction and lifelike skin tones. Black levels are nice and inky deep without compromising shadow detail and there are no problems with mpeg compression or obvious digital scrubbing. This isn't the most colorful film ever made and obviously the transfer should (and does) reflect that, so don't expect a lot of eye-popping bright hues in every single scene, but the efforts here really do a great job of capturing the tone and atmosphere of the film. There's a tiny bit of ringing here and there and one or two shots that look just a little noisier than others but these complaints are minor and for the most part the transfer is great.

The English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track is the way to go, but alternate audio tracks are offered up in French and German Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and in Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, with optional subtitles provided in English SDH, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese. But let's get back to that DTS-HD track. How does it shape up? Quite well. It isn't the most bombastic of mixes, because Insomnia isn't that type of movie, so sometimes it's a bit front heavy but rear channels are used well to place ambient and background noise quite effectively and bass response is strong when it needs to be. Dialogue is always clean and clear and easy to understand. Again, not a surround sound demo disc, but Insomnia sounds as active and directional as it needs to.

First up is an excellent commentary track from director Christopher Nolan which does a great job of delving deep into both his creative process and his intentions behind making this movie. Here he speaks at length about the various issues that he ran into while making the film, locations, casting, performances, script and editing choices and more. With the film presented here in the order that it was shot, it really lets him take us with him as he goes over things in the order in which they happened. The results are considerably more interesting than your average commentary track. There are also roughly forty-five minutes worth of scene specific mini-commentaries provided by lead actress Hilary Swank, screenwriter Hillary Seitz, director of photography Wally Pfiser, production designer Nathan Crowley, and editor Dody Dorn. You can watch these individually or by way of a 'play all' feature. They're interesting in their own rights and do a good job of letting some of the other contributors to the picture tell their own stories about their experiences but are obviously not as comprehensive as Nolan's take on the film.

From there, we move on to a series of featurettes, the first of which is the eight minute Day For Night which explores how Nolan and his crew went about setting up this production in its unique locations and how Robin Williams came on board. The seventeen minute 180 Degrees is an interesting conversation between Nolan and star Al Pacino that allows the pair to dissect the different characters in the film and discuss their experiences together, while the twelve minute In The Fog gives Pfister and Crowley to talk about how and why they shot certain footage during the pre-production phase of the film and how they worked it into the picture later on. Last but not least, the seven minute Eyes Wide Open is a look at the real life issues that plague insomniacs.

Rounding out the extras are a single three minute deleted scene (available with or without commentary from Nolan), a still gallery, a theatrical trailer, menus and chapter stops. All of the extras are in standard definition except for the trailer and the still gallery.

The Final Word:

A really well directed and well acted thriller, Insomnia is a beautifully shot and fairly claustrophobic work of cinematic tension and Warner Brothers have done a very respectable job bringing it to Blu-ray.