In Nolan's Insomnia, Walter sees that as a way to bond with Will-they've both killed, but Walter believes both killings were accidental and therefore aren't tantamount to murder (the film needs Walter to be unambiguously evil, so Will counters that he beat the teenage girl to death for ten minutes whereas in the Norwegian version the victim accidentally dies after some rough foreplay). His protagonist, Jonas Engstrom ( Stellan Skarsgard), is haunted not by his actions (there's no IA investigation or particularly camaraderie between he and his partner), but by the fact that there may be no repercussions whatsoever. But Skjoldbjærg's film has a far more nihilistic view of the world.įor Skjoldbjærg's Insomnia, truth and lies are meaningless because everything is meaningless. It may not always be honest and there will be a reckoning, but we tell stories because we need to be fooled in some way. In Nolan's world, you can, through lies and misdirection, impose order on chaos. In Insomnia, the idea works in a vacuum, but it strains against the plot beats of the original story, and that original story is at cross-purposes with Nolan's view. That's an interesting thread, but Nolan doesn't really get to pull at it until he reaches The Dark Knight where Batman and Gordon create a lie about Harvey Dent's death. His means of getting justice were based on a lie, but since Will knew the man to be guilty, justice would ultimately be served on a lie rather than the truth, and that ethos carries over to why Will is trying to cover up Hap's killing-because the truth may not be as good as a lie. The randomness of the universe was about to impose chaos, so he created a lie that would tell the truth. For Will, in his confession to Ellie near the film's climax, he reveals that he forged evidence to convict a man who he knew to be guilty but was at risk of getting away. This is also where the film is at its most interesting as it tries to thread the needle between justice and truth. Like Leonard Shelby and other Nolan protagonists, Will is lying to himself and using that comforting lie that the ends justify the means. The remake's big contribution, and where Nolan emerges most clearly, is that Will is actually guilty of what he's being accused of by internal affairs. But ultimately, that feels like the film getting bogged down in a semantic distinction rather than really exploring intention in any meaningful way. For Nolan's Insomnia, intent is everything, and it makes for a crucial distinction between a killing and a murder. These are the similar beats of the original movie, although Nolan's version adds the extra layer of the IA investigation, which feels like a way to hold the audience's hand through the question of "Why wouldn't Will just admit it was an accident?" But where Nolan's version falters is because it's obsessed with motivation. During this time, in a place where it's always daylight, Will suffers from insomnia. The twist is that the killer, Walter Finch ( Robin Williams), saw the whole thing, so while Will is busy covering up the accidental shooting (which may have looked intentional because Hap was going to talk to internal affairs) and fending off eager detective Ellie Burr ( Hilary Swank), he also has an awkward relationship with the soft-spoken Finch.
When he arrives in Nightmute, it seems like they've got a fairly direct line to catching their killer, but a bungled sting operation leads to the killer escaping and Will accidentally shooting and killing Hap during the pursuit. For Will, this assignment isn't because he's a famous detective who has solved some notable cases, but rather because he and Hap are being investigated by internal affairs, and the powers-that-be want to get Will away from the spotlight. The plot has Al Pacino playing LAPD detective Will Dormer, who, along with his partner Hap Eckhart ( Martin Donovan), is basically exiled to a small remote Alaskan fishing village of Nightmute to investigate the murder of a teenage girl.
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