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Great Writing & Storytelling Shape INSOMNIA and ABOUT A BOY Click for the Official Site For the follow-up to his brilliant Hollywood debut, director Christopher Nolan, who delivered one of the most taut and enthralling films of last year with "Memento," travels to the sweeping green and white landscapes of Alaska and back to themes of moral ambiguity and unreliable narratives with "Insomnia." An almost entirely faithful remake of a 1997 Swedish film of the same name, "Insomnia" chronicles a respected detective's psychological and moral breakdown while working a murder investigation on remote turf. Al Pacino stars as Will Dormer, a celebrated L.A. cop who has been called to Alaska, along with his partner (played by Martin Donovan), to solve the homicide of a young girl. After piecing through the evidence with the local police force, Dormer and company plant a trap for their chief suspect, which goes awry. When the perp flees the scene, the cops fan out, giving chase amid a misty and rocky crag. Unable to clearly discern what's what, and who is who, Dormer mistakenly shoots his partner and then tries to cover-up his own homicide. Incapable of sleeping because of the penetrating sun (which shines almost 24 hours of the day in Alaska during the summertime) and the burgeoning weight on his conscience, Dormer begins to unravel. Escaping an internal affairs investigation at home and at odds with his partner over testifying, Pacino's weary cop is haunted by the notion that his fateful act may not have been an accident. Matters become more complicated when the man Dormer was chasing contacts him. A writer of crappy detective novels, Walter Finch (Robin Williams) is, ironically, the only other person who knows what really happened out in that fog. As such, suspect and detective become unlikely "partners;" Finch compels Dormer to help him in exchange for the writer's silence about the slain partner. Attempting to draw a parallel between himself and the detective, Finch constantly reminds Dormer that they are both killers; killers who mistakenly took their victims' lives. And, as Dormer works to taint the evidence pertaining to his partner's death, the local female detective (Hilary Swank) who incidentally reveres the elder cop, begins to uncover the truth from her own successful investigation. Aside from Nolan's attempt to beef up the animosities between Dormer and his partner and the addition of a backstory insinuating that the sainted detective had in fact built his career by planting evidence, the American version of "Insomnia" is much like the original. As in that film, there is a lurking feeling of emptiness which hangs over the proceedings, more pervasive than the fleeting images of the dead or the misdeed from his past that haunt Pacino's tormented cop. Though it has all the makings of a fascinating film, "Insomnia" somehow also feels rote and forced. As hard as Nolan works to place Dormer and Finch in a similar light, the comparison between the deviant psychopath and fallen hero never gels as strongly as it should. Attempting to drive home a vision of a cop and crook that are not all that different, "Insomnia" waters itself down to a blithe morality play that it doesn't even ultimately pull off. More interesting than the bout between Dormer and Finch is the connection between Dormer's fragile mental state and the environmental duress (the non-stop sunlight) throwing gasoline on the fire. In many ways, Pacino's Dormer is similar to Leonard Shelby, Nolan's memory-stripped anti-hero from "Memento". But unlike Leonard, whose fascinating condition both forced and allowed him to act without conscience or consequence (since he has no recall of the past and no regard for the future), Dormer is intertwined with the mundane particulars of guilt; perhaps that's why the particulars in "Insomnia" seem of so much less consequence than those in "Memento."
ABOUT A BOY Click for the Official Site The silver screen incarnation of Nick Hornby's self-centered, yet ultimately lovable, manchild central characters continues with About A Boy. British author Hornby, who saw the narcissistic and infantile record store owner he created in his bestseller High Fidelity come to life in the form of John Cusack, can now add Hugh Grant to the list of lovable Hollywood men to fill the shoes of his string of shallow alter-egos. And, like High Fidelity, About A Boy tells the story of a shallow bloke in a smart, witty and ultimately endearing way. Obsessed with immature men who can't seem to get it right with the right woman, Hornby's thin tales of redemption and coupling are supported by sound writing and some funny scenarios. It's Hornby's ability to combine original storytelling and good writing with unoriginal stories that make his work ideal for better-than-average Hollywood fare. And About A Boy recalls the same glimmer that High Fidelity brought. Like High Fidelity (which itself was a smarter-than-average romantic comedy twinged with a dark sense of humor), About A Boy tells a rather pat story (this time about an unlikely friendship between a teenaged boy and a reclusive bachelor) in a delightful and fresh manner. Grant stars as Will, a thirty eight-year-old, jobless Brit who spends his days watching TV, buying CDs and occasionally playing pool (or, as he refers to it, "exercising"). Living off the royalties his father made on a hit Christmas song in the '50s, Will revels in doing nothing and being nothing. Embracing the notion that every man truly is an island, the only effort Will expends in life revolves around getting himself laid. And, when he's unexpectedly set up with a single mom, he discovers that these vulnerable women are the perfect kind to date. Unsure about jumping into relationships with new men, great in bed and in sore need of attention, single mums prove, ironically, to be perfect for commitment phobes like Will (he sleeps with them, plays with their kid and they invariably break-up with him). In a perverse attempt at meeting this new subset of desirable females, Will stakes out a social group called SPAT (Single Parents Alone Together). Posing as the father of an imaginary two-year-old named Ned, Will picks up a hot young mum who ends up bringing him into contact with the two people who will change his life: a twelve-year-old named Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) and his mom, Fiona (Toni Collette). After walking in on Fiona's failed suicide attempt with Marcus in tow, Will becomes the target of the lonely young boy's affections. At first unwilling to hang about with the youngster, Will eventually warms to him and begins to learn lessons on how to be an adult from the worldly teen. Laced with dark humor, About A Boy is enjoyable and heartwarming and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. (Among the funniest scenes is the one where Grant infiltrates SPAT-it's there that one embittered single mother wears a T-shirt bearing the unforgettable slogan, "Lorena Bobbit for Surgeon General.") And while not wanting to fault the film for its handling of the saddest element of its story (Fiona's attempted suicide is dealt with a bit too optimistically), the trick reminds us that this is standard Hollywood-even with its London setting and British cast. Nonetheless, Hollywood doesn't have such a bad day here. |
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