Grade:  B

Director:  Christopher Nolan		Released:  May 2002
Writer:  Nikolai Frobenius		MPAA Rating:  R
Players:  Al Pacino, Robin Williams, Hilary Swank		Running time:  118 minutes

Ratings System

I like Insomnia a lot, it's intelligent and suspenseful.  But I want to get my main criticism out of the way first.

[spoilers, highlight hidden text to read]
This film has a lot of realism built in, and I like that.  I like a movie that makes real-world sense.  But I don't like a movie that shows such realism, only to break that pattern at the end.  Honestly, when was the last time you heard of a murder investigation that resulted in two dead detectives, and one dead suspect?  The shoot-out at the end breaks the rules that the film set up, and it took me out of the movie experience, it pulled me out of the realism and reminded me that it's only a movie.
[end spoilers]

The good news is that you won't feel the urge to watch this movie backwards to see if the plot holds up.  You get to watch this Nolan film in sequence.  So it's got that going for it, which is nice.

Insomnia is very well done.  The story is very nice, the plotting is great, the characters are well-developed, if not a little cheesy on occasion (the brooding high school kid, Randy).  Pacino and Williams are very good, making this a thriller that stands in the top tier of thrillers.  It's near impossible to predict the twists to the plot, which makes this a truly engaging and worthwhile film that "keeps you guessing".

- crocoPuffs