The film follows two Los Angeles homicide detectives investigating the murder of a teenage girl in Nightmute, Alaska. After the killer witnesses an accidental shooting committed by one of the detectives, they create a plan for both parties to mutually avoid prosecution.
Insomnia premiered at the Tribeca Festival on May 3, 2002, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 24, 2002. It grossed $114 million worldwide against a production budget of $46 million. The film received critical praise, particularly for Pacino's and Williams' performances. At the 29th Saturn Awards, Williams was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and Seitz was nominated for Best Writing.
In the small fishing town of Nightmute, Alaska, 17-year-old Kay Connell is found murdered. Los Angeles Police Department detectives Will Dormer and Hap Eckhart are sent to assist the local police with their investigation. They do so at the request of police chief Nyback, an old colleague of Dormer. Ellie Burr, a young, local detective who is also a fan of Dormer's investigative work, picks them up when they arrive.
Back in Los Angeles, internal affairs is investigating one of Dormer's past cases. While in the restaurant of their hotel, Eckhart reveals that he is going to testify against Dormer in exchange for immunity. Dormer responds by noting that many criminals whom he helped to convict using questionable evidence could go free if their cases are reopened.
Dormer cleverly attracts the murderer to the scene of the crime, but the suspect flees into the fog, shooting one of the police officers in the leg. Dormer spots a figure in the fog and fires with his backup weapon after his primary jams. Rushing to the fallen figure, Dormer picks up a .38 pistol the suspect had dropped. He then discovers that he has shot Eckhart. Eckhart recognizes him, and dies believing Dormer shot him on purpose.
Because of Eckhart's pending testimony, Dormer knows that internal affairs will never believe the shooting was an accident, so he claims that Eckhart was shot by the suspect. He does not mention that he has the .38 pistol. Burr is put in charge of the shooting investigation, and her team finds the bullet that hit the officer. That night, Dormer walks to an alley and fires the .38 pistol into an animal carcass before retrieving and cleaning the bullet. At the morgue, the pathologist hands him the bagged bullet retrieved from Eckhart's body, but she is unfamiliar with its type. Dormer leaves and switches the 9mm slug from Eckhart's body with the .38 bullet.
Over the next few days, Dormer is plagued by insomnia, brought on by his guilt over killing Eckhart and exacerbated by the perpetual daylight. Dormer starts receiving anonymous phone calls from the killer, who claims to have witnessed Dormer kill his partner. When the police learn that Kay was a fan of local crime writer Walter Finch, Dormer breaks into Finch's apartment in the nearby village of Umkumiut. Finch arrives home, realizes the police are present, and evades Dormer after a chase. Dormer returns to Finch's apartment and plants the .38 to frame Finch.
Finch contacts Dormer and arranges a meeting on a ferry. Finch wants help in shifting suspicion to Kay's abusive boyfriend Randy Stetz and in return will stay silent about the Eckhart shooting. Dormer gives advice on handling police questioning. After Finch leaves Dormer on the ferry, he shows the detective a tape recorder he used to record the conversation.
Finch calls Dormer and tells him that Kay's death was "an accident"; he beat her to death in a fit of rage after she laughed at his sexual advances. The next day, Finch gives false testimony at the police station. When Finch claims Randy has a gun, Dormer realizes Finch has discovered the planted gun and has hidden it at Randy's home. Dormer frantically searches Randy's house for the gun, and hides when the police arrive. The police find the gun at the house and Randy is arrested. Finch asks Burr to come to his lake house the next day to collect letters indicating that Randy abused Kay.
Burr returns to the scene of Eckhart's death and finds a 9 mm shell casing, which conflicts with the bullet type from Eckhart's body. She reads her own case study from an investigation Dormer was involved in and learns he carries a 9 mm, leading her to suspect that he shot Eckhart. Meanwhile, on his last night staying in the hotel, Dormer confides in the hotel owner, Rachel Clement, about the internal affairs investigation. He fabricated evidence to help convict a pedophile he was certain was guilty of murdering a child and who would have walked if Eckhart had testified.
Dormer learns that Burr has gone to Finch's home. He finds Kay's letters in Finch's apartment and realizes that Finch intends to kill Burr. He learns of Finch's lake house and rushes there. At the house, Finch knocks Burr unconscious just as Dormer arrives, and takes Burr's gun. Dormer is too disoriented from lack of sleep to fight off Finch. Burr revives and saves Dormer, while Finch escapes. Burr reveals she knows Dormer shot Eckhart, and he admits that he is no longer certain if it was an accident. From his shed, Finch shoots at them with a shotgun, and Burr returns fire with Dormer's gun while Dormer sneaks around to Finch's location. After a scuffle in which Dormer grabs Finch's shotgun, Finch shoots Dormer with Burr's gun, and Dormer shoots and kills Finch with the shotgun.
Burr rushes to the wounded Dormer and comforts him by affirming that Eckhart's shooting was accidental, then moves to throw away the 9 mm shell casing to preserve Dormer's reputation. Dormer stops her, saying "don't lose your way". Dormer says, "Just let me sleep", and dies. Burr puts the shell casing back in the evidence bag.
Insomnia has Robin Williams playing a villain, deviating from the comedic roles for which he was earlier known.[6] Regarding his decision to cast Williams, Nolan said: "I think [audiences] will come away feeling like they have seen a 'new' Robin Williams. Seeing Robin Williams doing something they would have never imagined that he would or could do."[7]
Nolan on Williams's acting:
What I thought of Robin, was, well he is an extraordinary guy to work with and he really gave what I consider to be a flawless performance. I wound up watching the film hundreds of times as we cut it, and I never hit that point with the performance where you start to see the acting. Most performances, at a point, bits start to peel off and away, but with Robin's he was very much in that character. Not that he's a very dark person to work with – he's very lively and friendly and amusing to work with. He really found something within himself. I think it's a very underrated bit of work on his part.[8]
Filming
Insomnia was filmed over a three-month period from April to June 2001. The opening aerial scene was filmed over the Columbia Glacier near Valdez, Alaska[9] and the float plane approach was over the Portland Canal near Hyder, Alaska, and Stewart, British Columbia. The town of Nightmute, Alaska, was primarily filmed in/around Squamish, British Columbia, including the hotel/lodge, police station, high school, and funeral cemetery scene.[9] The scene where Dormer shoots his partner on the rocky beach in the fog was filmed at Clementine Creek in Indian Arm, outside of Vancouver.[9] The village of Umkumuit, where Finch's apartment is located and where the log chase scene occurs, was filmed on Vancouver Island in Port Alberni.[10] The waterfall road scene where Dormer is on his way to Finch's lake house and spins his car 180° was shot in front of Bridal Veil Falls on the Richardson Highway near Valdez, Alaska. The final scene of the movie on the fictional Lake Kgun at Finch's lake house was filmed on the northwest end of Strohn Lake in Bear Glacier Provincial Park, just outside of Stewart, British Columbia.[9] For this final scene, the film crew constructed Finch's lake house and dock from scratch and then disassembled and removed it after filming was completed in late June 2001.[9]
Reception
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 200 reviews, with an average rating of 7.70/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Driven by Al Pacino and Robin Williams' performances, Insomnia is a smart and riveting psychological drama".[11] On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[12] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[13]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said that "Unlike most remakes, the Nolan Insomnia is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play."[14]
Erik Skjoldbjærg, the director of the original film, said of Nolan's reinterpretation:
It was quite close, stylistically, to the original. I felt lucky that it's such a well crafted, smart film and that it had a really good director handling it, because as a remake I think it did really well, and it doesn't hurt any original if a remake is well done. So I felt I was lucky that Christopher Nolan took it upon himself to do it.[15]
Taste of Cinema complimented Nolan for being able to "capture the excitement of the original while still setting it apart as a notable film itself."[16]IndieWire included Insomnia in their "10 Remakes of Classics by Great Auteurs" list, writing, "Nolan shifts the moral ground from the snowballing moral corruption of the original to shades of guilt and accountability and Pacino's increasingly bleary and hallucinatory perspective becomes an evocative metaphor for his struggle."[17]
Later Christopher Nolan singled out Insomnia as his most underrated film:
"I'm very proud of the film. I think, of all my films, it's probably the most underrated. [...] The reality is it's one of my most personal films in terms of what it was to make it. It was a very vivid time in my life. It was my first studio film, I was on location, it was the first time I'd worked with huge movie stars. [...]
That's not really for me to say, but every now and again I meet a filmmaker and that's actually the film that they're interested in or want to talk about. Yeah, very proud of the film."[18][19]
Novelization
Robert T. Westbrook adapted the screenplay to novel form, which was published by Onyx in May 2002.[20]
