Opening

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—— A Green Story May 24
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—— After Earth May 31
—— Now You See Me May 31
100% The Kings of Summer May 31
89% The East May 31

Insomnia (2002)

tomatometer

93

Average Rating: 7.7/10
Reviews Counted: 175
Fresh: 162 | Rotten: 13

Driven by Pacino's performance, Insomnia is a smart and riveting psychological drama.

94

Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 36
Fresh: 34 | Rotten: 2

Driven by Pacino's performance, Insomnia is a smart and riveting psychological drama.

audience

67

liked it
Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 90,632

My Rating

Movie Info

Director Christopher Nolan follows up his breakthrough sophomore film Memento with this remake of a stylish Norwegian thriller. Al Pacino stars as Detective Will Dormer, a Los Angeles Police Department legend who temporarily escapes an internal affairs investigation that may ruin his career by traveling to Nightmute, AK, the remote site of a murder that has the local authorities flummoxed. Along with his partner, Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), and the small town's wide-eyed rookie investigator,

R,

Mystery & Suspense, Drama

Hillary Seitz

Oct 15, 2002

$67.2M

Warner Bros. Pictures - Official Site External Icon

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Cast

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All Critics (177) | Top Critics (38) | Fresh (168) | Rotten (13) | DVD (37)

It's a crafty story told with more style and gray areas than your average thriller.

July 20, 2002 Full Review Source: Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Insomnia is not my kind of arsenic, but it's so well-made and enigmatic I liked it anyway.

May 30, 2002 Full Review Source: New York Observer
New York Observer
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The Hollywood version (which is half an hour longer) transports the action to Alaska, and works up a respectable level of bleary-eyed paranoia.

May 28, 2002 Full Review Source: Village Voice
Village Voice
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The best thing about Insomnia is that despite director Christopher Nolan's soft spot for moody-blues obfuscation, he has the good sense to keep his star in practically every shot.

May 26, 2002 Full Review Source: New York Magazine
New York Magazine
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A thriller whose style, structure and rhythms are so integrated with the story, you cannot separate them.

May 24, 2002
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

You see Robin Williams and psycho killer, and you think, hmmmmm. You see the movie and you think, zzzzzzzzz.

May 24, 2002 Full Review Source: Washington Post | Comments (12)
Washington Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Insomnia is a slow burn, and the European influences are very obvious in both pacing and tone.

July 31, 2012 Full Review Source: 7M Pictures
7M Pictures

An exceptional picture from one of the most gifted British filmmakers to emerge in the past decade.

May 23, 2011 Full Review Source: Observer [UK]
Observer [UK]

...as of this writing, neither Pacino nor Williams has done anything significantly better. (Blu-ray Edition)

July 11, 2010 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis
Movie Metropolis

...if there is anything that spoils the fun, it's the plot itself, which is too straightforward and offers too few surprises to be entirely engaging.

July 11, 2010 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis
Movie Metropolis

Pacino can't be accused of sleepwalking through Christopher Nolan's brilliant Insomnia.

November 2, 2008 Full Review Source: What Would Toto Watch?
What Would Toto Watch?

This director has an unerring knack for arresting imagery and disorienting narrative.

September 24, 2007 Full Review Source: eFilmCritic.com
eFilmCritic.com

Director Christopher Nolan sure does like to mess with the senses.

July 14, 2007 Full Review Source: Big Picture Big Sound
Big Picture Big Sound

Fans of the original will miss its relentless dyspepsia, but Nolan's intention was clearly to cast the material in a more conventional Hollywood mold without turning it into namby-pamby nonsense, and he succeeds admirably.

March 3, 2007 Full Review Source: TV Guide's Movie Guide
TV Guide's Movie Guide

The film is creepy, and not because of any one particular scene or moment, but because Nolan takes us, body and soul, into a place that all is illuminated all the time

March 24, 2005 Full Review
Bangitout.com

Ultimately, Nolan's film asks the question: Do the ends justify the means? Dormer is willing to go to cover up the truth to bring about a result that is good for the world.

January 15, 2005
Looking Closer

Al Pacino has played enough wise guys and tough cops to be able to do it in his sleep. And that's pretty much what he does in Insomnia, a stylish suspense-thriller

August 14, 2004
Reel.com

Very good...

January 7, 2004 Full Review Source: sbs.is

Never reaches its full potential, but still manages to be better than the average, run-of-the-mill crime thriller.

September 9, 2003 Full Review Source: Radio Free Entertainment
Radio Free Entertainment

Inteligente suspense que conta com ótimos diálogos e atuações deslumbrantes de Pacino e Williams. As cenas em que estes contracenam são geniais - e a fotografia e as locações são belíssimas.

July 25, 2003
Cinema em Cena

Audience Reviews for Insomnia

Can't remember if I saw this in the movies when it first came out or if I watched it at home and forgot to write it up. But after watching a second time hard to imagine it was produced 10 years ago. Al Pacino plays awesome part as he always does as a cop. He's in Alaska working on a case when he kills his partner. The case is a teen age girl was murdered and Robin Williams is the killer he's tracking down as the movie mazes about, excellent twist here and there. Williams always seems to play a excellent Psycho. 4 stars for this one 2-27-13
February 28, 2013
bbcfloridabound
Bruce Bruce

Super Reviewer

Insomnia, as previously mentioned, feels like a two-hour episode of a television crime show, the only changes being the haunting psychological character study that we rarely get a glimpse of on television, and the screenplay's relieving lack of forensic jargon in order to let us get on with and make sense of the story. For the majority of the film, we feel as if we are indeed watching a pilot episode for an upcoming crime series. I occasionally forgot I was watching a theatrically released motion picture, and wondered who would play the antagonist in the following episode. The narrative doesn't fully satisfy. On the other hand, it does echo the rest of Christopher Nolan's work, in a sense that the visuals are used very wisely. The perturbing opening titles, the occasional surreal closeups of murder and hemorrhage, the repeating jump cuts as Al Pacino's character grows more paranoid, the memorably ominous fog scene. The faint of heart may certainly find the title an apt description of the night on which they view this film.

read the rest at themoviefreakblog.com
September 7, 2011
spielberg00

Super Reviewer

    1. Det. Will Dormer: I'm coasting on my laurels, thank you.
    – Submitted by Jesse K (29 days ago)
    1. Det. Will Dormer: Day after day you suck the marrow out of real cops when you never had the balls to become one yourself.
    – Submitted by Kia M (2 months ago)
    1. Randy Stetz: You're just a prick in a leather jacket. What the fuck do you know?
    – Submitted by Kia M (2 months ago)
    1. Det. Will Dormer: [phone rings] Dormer here hello.
    2. Walter Finch: Can't sleep will.
    – Submitted by joseph j (4 months ago)
    1. Det. Will Dormer: Just let me sleep.
    – Submitted by Prethivee N (20 months ago)
    1. Det. Will Dormer: Don't lose your way.
    – Submitted by Prethivee N (20 months ago)

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Foreign Titles

  • Insomnia (2002) (CA)
  • Insomnio (ES)
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