VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

denis888 This Norwegian original of Insomnia is not better or worse than a highly successful US version with Pacino, Williams and Swank. It is the same story but it just is different. I think, we must try our best to not compare both films and watch them as two separate entities. Here, the filmmakers made a very good job of showing us the utter misery and suffering of sleepless policeman from Sweden. His mood sinks deeper and he is clearly in pain all the time. This is a well-known plot and there is no need in retelling it here, the US version preserved most of it, I just want to add that Norwegian version is very gloomy, bleak, moody, slow and foggy - just as it had to be to create a certain feeling in us This is a very fine work, decent, deep, steady and rather dry, but dryness is Key factor in making the story even more realistic and captivating. So, stop comparing and just watch it

Robert J. Maxwell Two Swedish policemen, one of them Stellan Skarsgard, arrive in northern Norway to help solve the murder of a high-school girl. The killer is almost trapped but escapes into the fog along the shore. By mistake, Skarsgard shoots and kills his partner. He invents a story in which the girl's murderer shot his partner. Later he's invited by the girl's killer to meet at an isolated place. The two agree to pin the murder on the dead girl's boyfriend, an obnoxious kid anyway. But Skarsgard, plagued by his conscience and the midnight sun, has been unable to sleep and makes an attempt to capture the killer. The killer clobbers Skarsgard and then accidentally falls to his death. A Norwegian policewoman has figured out roughly what went on but contemptuously allows Skarsgard to go back home where, it is fondly hoped, he'll be able to sleep again, although we are left with grave doubts about that. The final freeze frame is of Skarsgard's face and everything fades to black except for his eyes, which are wide open and glow in the dark like an uneasy animal's.Stellan Skarsgard is just about perfect for the role of the insomniac cop. He always looks half asleep anyway. He slouches around, placid, bookish, as if his mind were elsewhere, maybe in wonderland. You can't ruffle him. When the murderer shoots off his shotgun into the plaster ceiling over his shoulder, Skarsgard simply moves his head to the side with an expression of mild distaste. I show more animation when the dentist says, "Turn this way a little." It's a slow film though, a story of intrigue and character, rather than a who-dunnit with a lot of ancillary action. What I mean is that it's quite different from the American remake that starred Al Pacino. Pacino is equally good at projecting exhaustion but in a very different way.The logic in this film isn't as clear as that in the remake. Here, Skarsgard can have absolutely no motive for shooting his partner of more than a year. In the remake, Pacino's partner was about to squeal on him for some irregularities to Internal Affairs. And here, all it takes is a single phone call for Skarsgard to agree to meet the killer. Pacino had to listen to Robin Williams sympathize with him about his insomnia. And Pacino's hallucinations were far more vivid -- a massive truck bearing down on him in his lane -- while Skarsgard's are more subtle -- a glimpse of his dead partner's face staring through a window. The remake is palpably "American". It ends with a shoot out that Williams' heavy has never shown himself capable of. Shotguns and pistols bark. Seaside fishing shacks are blown to smithereens. So is Williams, while Pacino dies after a few parting words. The European original ends with a dying fall and an ambiguous hint of things to come. (Those glowing eyes.) Neither film is a masterpiece. They both fit nicely into the generic frame of the guilty cop movie. And in some ways I prefer the remake. It's pace is faster and the characters' motivations are explored in greater depth, and finally it makes more sense. But that stupid final shoot out works against it and it is, after all, not the original, so it gets no bonus points.

Andy (film-critic) Insomnia reminded me of the Keitel-cult classic - of the same insightful creation - continued to impress upon my mind. I speak of the lewd film, Bad Lieutenant (of which I was not overly fond of) where a corrupt cop solves the mystery of an unspeakable crime. Insomnia oddly follows the same vein, but in more of an inconspicuous nature. Instead of pushing the despicable nature of the main character – in this case it is Engström – our fearless and simple director gives it to us very under the radar. Pealing back each layer with delicacy, Skjoldbjærg gives us a crime, followed by a random act of innocence, followed by a small cover-up, followed up with a never-ending stream of light, which is all surrounded by the fear of the unknown and the endless possibilities that the world that has been created around us can instantly be crumbling down upon everyone involved. I enjoyed this film so much because of this small, insatiable sensation that Skjoldbjærg instantly created with his slow moving camera, his deadpan scenes filled with Norwegian chills, and that light – the unending light that haunts Skarsgård's flawless portrayal of Engström. Also, the technique of light was used under the guise of night impressed me. In most Hollywood chillers of this nature, you see night being the time when our heroes confront their fears or moral dilemmas – not here, the light brings out the inner-soul of our character and gives us a choice whether to like him or not. Notice the character that Engström most connects with in this film – Vik's killer. Both claim to be innocent victims of accidents, but while they search each other out, they have trouble leaving each other's side. You didn't see this connection as much in the remake, mainly because mainstream Hollywood always has to have a defined "bad guy". Skjoldbjærg gave us a soul to the unknown.Norway is filled with simple people constantly dealing with deadly issues that we take as normal day-to-day living. I loved that big city police officers were brought in to handle a murder case that obviously could not be handled by the simpleton local officers … yet, in the end; Skjoldbjærg poses yet another question to us about who really was more knowledgeable. There is a constant struggle going on during this film that makes us, the viewer, question the entire motive at hand. We want Engström to find the girl's killer, but also we want him to come clean about himself – a question we ask every heroine in a film struggling to come clean and overcome obstacles. Yet, with Insomnia, we know nothing about Engström to even ask this question. It comes as a half-hearted request because he was not innocent to begin with. Skarsgård plays this man with suspicion and question because we are given no diagram of how this man arrived to this one location. We hear whispers in the non-existent shadows, but nothing that fully develops his past. He plays with our perception of "good cop/bad cop" like in no other movie. There are scenes that make us cheer for him, while others (like the stint with the hotel receptionist) that make us cover our eyes and quiver our lips. Like no other, Skarsgård develops, matriculates, and dedicates his time to this character, ensuring that every bold step that he makes is done for a reason. A complete reversal from what we saw him doing in Breaking the Waves or Good Will Hunting, here we see him complex and dedicated to the character at hand, continually proving that Skarsgård is a force in the Hollywood community (i.e. see the final scene and those non-replaceable eyes).Insomnia is a film that stands directly on its own two feet without instability. While it is not quite at the level of utmost perfection (even though there are quite a bit of perfect elements) due to some slower key elements, the awkward pacing of the grand finale, and the jumbled themes of lies and deceit (especially between Engström and the actual killer) – it is still a very grandiose film. It keeps your attention, it brings about the ideas that demons do not just reside in the dark corners of your mind, but in fact in your everyday lives. I think the best moments of this film occur when Engström fights with his partner after the accident in the lighted bedroom of the hotel. I enjoyed this the most because it gave us a rare opportunity to see a different character than what was originally presented to us. It violently gave us a slice of the good during times when we didn't think it was humanly possible. This may sound strange, but I also enjoyed the Norwegian accents (albeit a Norwegian film) because they added this sense of absurdity to it all. It took us to another place; where the oddity of forever sunlight was drown out by the sounds coming out of our characters mouths. I am not complaining or thinking this to be strange, I just thought that it added to the overall tone of the film, giving us a chance to step away from mainstream Hollywood.Overall, I would highly suggest this film. I am a believer that if you see the Nolan remake first, you will not like this film at all. The two are not the same, and to compare the two (in the big picture) would be heresy. I loved the acting, I loved the location, and I thought the plot was detailed, yet simple, symbolic yet original all at the same time. This wasn't a story convoluted by deep sub-plots and overblown romances, this was a stiff drink on a cold day. It was the perfect balance between good and evil caught in a place where you cannot hide in the shadows. I thought it was another great addition to the Criterion library.Grade: **** out of *****

JoeKarlosi I don't think it's completely fair to evaluate a film by comparing two takes on the same material, but it was inevitable with this foreign original, directed by Erik Skjoldbjaerg. I had already seen Christopher Nolan's Americanized version of INSOMNIA and so I wanted to check out the differences. I may be in the minority here, but all this version did was make me appreciate the Al Pacino film more than I used to. I don't think Stellan Skarsgard was as effective in the part of a haggard detective undergoing a chronic lack of sleep and being forced into cooperating with a known killer. The setting here (Norway) was not nearly as picturesque as the Alaskan surroundings of the 2002 film. Truth be told, had I not already been familiar with everything going on in the story from the Nolan film, I think I would have missed a lot of details in this one. It would be interesting to know what I might have thought of this if I had caught it cold, without a comparison to the remake, but that's not a reality for me. But here's another example for me where a remake can sometimes deflate an original's power. Whether I'd even go so far to call a recent American rendition of a recent foreign movie a bona fide "remake" is debatable, though. ** out of ****