Insomnia (2002)
You shouldn’t have any problems falling asleep.
Presentation:
Similar in tone to Memento, Nolan delivers us a bland thriller that doesn’t add much to cinema. For its time it could be considered a decent movie, but today this film feels safe and predictable. The most interesting things of note is the implementation of occasionally bright highlights and seeking the darkness to deal with the lack of nightfall in Alaska, but this theme feels very extra, not really contributing much to the actual story. The main villain is also very surprising, and you wouldn’t really expect him to perform such a role given what he normally plays, but I think he gives a commendable performance here despite being a bit unconvincing.
Conclusion:
A very lukewarm film that doesn’t offer much especially compared to Nolan’s other films. This really seems like practice for his future projects like The Prestige and Batman Begins, but it is very apparent for this film where Nolan’s sensibilities are. He has that same emotional character-driven focus of early blockbusters with a propensity toward Michael Bay style crowd-pleasing action. Once you can see the relation, it is a bit hard to unsee. His more polished films are able to hide this and make it more sexy, but at its core, Nolan’s filmmaking here shows that when there are no fancy effects or storylines, the dialogue motivated characters are very flat.
Recommendations
When atmosphere is the horror.