Insomnia
In all of his storied career, it’s a real shame that Robin Williams didn’t take on more sinister, evil, villainous roles, preferring instead for the most part to stick to his typecasting as a goofy, overgrown manchild in a series of saccharine sweet, cutesy poo comedies (none more horribly so than Jack), but when he wasn’t popping up in dreck like Patch Adams or Mrs. Doubtfire and (more importantly so) was more reined in and disciplined as an actor, Williams was capable of some truly amazing work (his Oscar winning turn in Good Will Hunting was an example of this in an otherwise flat movie). But as for the bad guy roles, Williams only really flirted with his massive potential for being effective in those types of parts. He nearly scored the coveted role of The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman before losing out to Nicholson, and he was all but signed on the dotted line for The Riddler in Schumacher’s Batman Forever (which could have been tremendous) and was even announced in press releases as being all set to take on the part before he joined an exodus of talent from that film for what was already being said at the time about its atrocious script (which was proven true in the final product). He would play a psychopathic stalker type in One Hour Photo and a few other minor things, but the one role that stands to this day (and for all time sadly) as his best ever movie bad guy was this 2002 thriller (a remake of a popular Norwegian film) where director Christopher Nolan let his character be a slow build, not actually showing him on screen until nearly an hour into the movie but then having him take over the whole thing completely as a guy whom, while not necessarily brilliant, just happens to know the ins and outs of how to work people to his advantage. The film also features two other Oscar winners in Al Pacino and Hilary Swank and some great location work of its setting in Alaska. Pacino stars as a very well known and highly regarded LAPD homicide detective who is flown to a small, remote town in northern Alaska to help on a recent murder case there and assist the local police force including Swank, Nicky Katt, and Paul Dooley. However, while Dooley’s Police Chief is an old friend of Pacino’s and called in the favor to bring him up there to catch the killer, it also turns out that Pacino is catching some hell back home from Internal Affairs with the unhappy revelation that his partner (Martin Donovan) who is along with him for this trip is cutting a deal with the investigators which he promises won’t implicate Pacino, but Pacino still steadfastly believes that cops should just be cops because they all take risks on the job and thus should have each other’s backs. As for the case itself, a local teenage girl has been found severely beaten to death with her body wiped clean of any forensic or DNA evidence. Pacino correctly ascertains that the killer was quite fastidious when cleaning up the body post mortem and may even have the potential to strike again which is more than enough to earn the respect of Swank’s girl cop with a serious hero worship complex going on for him. The main suspect is the girl’s punkass, pretty boy, abusive boyfriend with a chip on his shoulder, but Pacino suspects the actual killer to be someone older, possibly a predatory pedophile type who may have been carrying on with the girl secretly. It’s just too bad that Pacino is in Alaska during that time of year when it’s daylight 24/7 as he finds himself unable to sleep at any point within the confines of his own hotel room, usually just staring out at the shuttered window while the light peeks in. This starts to effect both his energy and his focus on the case (along with bright flashes and touches of hallucination) so when they manage to successfully set a trap for the killer to walk into, he still manages to get away because a groggy Pacino makes an extremely serious (and career ending) mistake trying to apprehend him. Problem is, only the killer witnessed this mistake (and has proof) so it is finally at this point that Williams’ Walter Finch directly reveals himself to Pacino, a two bit detective novelist who adapts an amicable attitude towards his pursuer mostly because he knows that he has Pacino by the balls. After telling Pacino that he has the goods to bring him down, Williams privately confesses to killing the girl in what was a supposedly platonic relationship where he bought her gifts and allegedly served as a “mentor” to her own writing while he intended to consummate the relationship with her all along, only hitting a snag when she supposedly laughed at him during the moment of truth which led to his violent outburst that killed her. Pacino obviously hates the creep and wants nothing more than to kill him dead, but he also knows that if he’s exposed it could mean that a lot of bad people whom he brought down in LA could be released from prison and back on the streets, UNLESS he purposely steers the investigation away from Williams and towards implicating the teenage boyfriend as the killer, after which Williams assures him that after he goes back to LA that he’ll “take care of everything else”. Sadly, Pacino (under the duress stemming from lack of sleep) agrees, thus entering into collusion with this sick, twisted bastard for both of their own best interests, although they still play some mind games with each other when Williams is brought in for routine questioning. Pacino’s performance here is not to be discounted, kind of a broken down version of his Vincent Hanna from Heat along with him having some choice dialogue bits that he obviously relishes, but the idea of having a main cop character become more and more of a listless walking corpse as the story goes on due to not sleeping (coupled with the crippling guilt of his actions) makes it harder and harder to stay rooted in his character (especially after he crosses the line and enters into this unholy pact of self preservation) even with such a great actor in the role looking more long in the tooth than ever before. Swank as the starry eyed young female cop who wants nothing more than to be a real detective and is so thrilled and honored to be working with Pacino brings an inordinate amount of cuteness to her role here (a very underrated quality that Swank has) but spends much of the movie just watching The Batmobile like Robin would while Pacino struggles with his wobbly conscience. The film also features (the very hot) Maura Tierney as the sad eyed tavern clerk who Pacino confides in from time to time and Katherine Isabelle as the slutty teenage best friend of the victim who even goes so far as to make a pass at crusty old Pacino just because she knows that he’s from LA. But in the end it is still Robin Williams’ movie even as he cedes half of it to his legendary co star, playing a guy who has a rudimentary knowledge of police procedures (because of the detective novels he writes) who always claims that he never intended to kill the girl but rather that it happened as an unlucky twist of fate for him which he feels gives him an almost mock innocence, but now that it’s happened, not only does he not seem to feel a shred of remorse (although it’s possible that he hasn’t slept either during the course of the story), he is fully intent to keep his name out of the headlines and himself out of jail by exhibiting extraordinary SELF CONTROL (something you never heard often to describe Robin Williams performances) over his own actions as well as those of Pacino in order to keep both of them from going down in flames and maybe even just pin the whole thing on a fairly useless teenage boy with no future anyway. It’s just his unbridled conceit that a death resulting from an in the moment crime of passion (which this appeared to be) is literally not worthy of resulting in any consequences whatsoever for the perpetrator as if we should all go through life hoping that accidentally committing an act of murder is something that never actually befalls us (murderer = victim) that makes his role so chilling, so morbidly devoid of humanity, and that’s where this film’s greatest strength comes from and continues to be to this day. An overlooked, underrated performance to be sure which makes one wonder what would it have been like if Robin Williams had been allowed to carry a whole entire movie with this kind of darker, less family friendly incarnation which he displayed to full terrifying effect here…
8/10