INSOMNIA
"Nolan once again displays an unmistakable visual confidence and a
feeling for bravura moments like a nerve-wracking chase across a slippery
logjam floating down a frigid river... As he showed with Guy Pearce
in 'Memento,' Nolan is also adept at working with actors, and the
beneficiaries this time are not only Pacino, but also co-stars Robin
Williams and Hilary Swank, all of whom profit from the director's
ability to elicit reined-in performances. No one benefits from this
tight control more than the veteran Pacino...By not going over the
top, Pacino allows us to intuit the strength behind the anguished,
haunted mask, reminding us why he was such a compelling actor in the
first place." --Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times
"Small and shrunken, spectre-gray, Pacino spends most of the movie
behaving like a vampire who hasn't had a decent bite in weeks... Christopher
Nolan showed his hand to dazzling effect in 'Memento,' and his sense
of location, of places beaten up by a wrecking crew of desperate or
disappointed humans, has not deserted him. The trouble is that his
skills are now applied to a tale that can scarcely bear the pressure
of his sophistication...Williams and Pacino just don't mesh. Pacino's
mind is elsewhere, and Williams has the quick-smiling jumpiness of
a man not with a noisome secret to hide but with a fresh halibut down
his pants." --Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
"With his grave eyes and long face, Al Pacino doesn't need to feign
sleeplessness in 'Insomnia.' He looks here pretty much the way he
always does -- hungover with turmoil. And yet, no matter how familiar
he may seem, Pacino always manages to wrest a few new variations on
that sodden, blasted ferocity of his. He's one of the few major stars
from the seventies who still seems invigorated by acting, eager for
new dares...Williams is on a public crusade right now to expunge his
inner 'Patch Adams,' and I can only applaud him for that, but it will
take more than a reasonably effective rendition of a bogeyman to scrape
away the treacle. Pacino is the real reason to see this film..." -Peter
Rainer, New York
"Shorn of his manic comic genius, Robin Williams is about the most
uninteresting man to get a big movie since someone tried to make a
star out of Brian Bosworth. If he's not purging his id of its demons,
dancers and dwarfs at the speed of a jet, who cares?...We only arrive
at Williams's spectacular mediocrity after too long a time. The movie
begins with the arrival of Pacino -- growly, grouchy, eating the camera
almost to the f-stop regulator, his eyes purple with angst...Nolan
clearly didn't have the nerve to rein in Pacino....he seems overwhelmed
by the budget, the egos of the stars, the thinness of the script,
and he doesn't impose much personality on the picture." -Stephen Hunter,
The Washington Post
"... intensely sharp-witted remake of the noir thriller...The plot
tricks that 'Insomnia' plays on the audience take a back seat to Mr.
Nolan's wily faith in the seductiveness of guilt, an old familiar
sting that we can all appreciate, though not on the level that the
characters here feel. Not if we're lucky, anyway." -Elvis Mitchell,
The New York Times
"What we have here is your basic good-cop-bad-cop story, except that
those two characters are wrapped into one, with Pacino giving one
of his terrific tormented performances ... Williams is also good -
an entrancing smoothy...the film represents a triumph of atmosphere
over a none-too-mysterious mystery...it is thoughtful, quietly disturbing
proof of a young director's gift." -Richard Schickel, Time
"Pacino and Williams are very good together. Their scenes work because
Pacino's character, in regarding Williams, is forced to look at a
mirror of his own self-deception... Williams reminds us that he is
a considerable dramatic talent--and that while, over the years, he
has chosen to appear in some comedic turkeys ('Death to Smoochy' leaps
to mind), his serious films are almost always good ones."
--Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times |
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