Insomnia is a 2002 American psychological thriller film directed by Christopher Nolan and written by Hillary Seitz. A remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, it stars Al Pacino, Robin Williams, and Hilary Swank with Maura Tierney, Martin Donovan, Nicky Katt, and Paul Dooley in supporting roles. The film follows two Los Angeles homicide detectives investigating a murder in Nightmute, Alaska.
Released on May 24, 2002, Insomnia grossed more than $113 million worldwide against a production budget of $46 million, and received critical praise, including for Pacino's and Williams' performances.
Jonathan Demme was originally attached to direct the film and considered Harrison Ford for the role of Will Dormer.
Insomnia has Robin Williams playing a villain, deviating from the comedic roles for which he was earlier known. 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."
Nolan on Williams' 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.
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 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 the funeral cemetery scene. The scene where Will Dormer shoots his partner on the rocky beach in the fog was filmed at Clementine Creek in Indian Arm, outside of Vancouver. 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. 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. 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.
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 200 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Driven by Pacino's performance, Insomnia is a smart and riveting psychological drama." On Metacritic, the film holds a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.
Lou Lumenick of the New York Post gave the film an enthusiastic review, calling it a "four-course gourmet alternative to summer popcorn flicks, serving up the meatiest performances Al Pacino and Robin Williams have given in many years." 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."
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.
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." 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."
