Insomnia: The Movie

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the name sure didint catch up with me since it as clear i napped throughout the whole thing

― Chupa-Cabras (vicc13), Sunday, 18 August 2002 01:43 (twenty-three years ago)

but the point is how did i managed to think Christopher Nolan's directing would make a movie starring Al Pacino, Robbie Williams and Hilary Swank + listing George Clooney and Steven Sodebergh as producers good?

― Chupa-Cabras (vicc13), Sunday, 18 August 2002 01:46 (twenty-three years ago)

haha, insomnia Vs. the cure for insomnia.

I thought this one [yes, this one] looked like it might be quite good. but I ain't seen it. yet.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 18 August 2002 01:53 (twenty-three years ago)

It's not as bad in comparison to the original as everyone said.

― James Blount, Sunday, 18 August 2002 05:10 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think Nolan's is wildly inferior, but I prefer the original, mostly because of the many small cop-outs that Nolan made: in the original, the cop kills a dog to create evidence; in the new one, the dog's already dead. (You can't kill a dog in an American movie.) The backstory is far more complicated, I think needlessly, in the new version. The protagonist in the original is much shadier and sleazier, without the elaborate justifications that are made for him in Nolan's. The ending is cheesy as all get-out: the original woman who played Hilary Swank's part is more mature, has a smaller role and just seems more effective. The encounters with the innkeeper are also simpler and more effective.

Overall, I just thought the first was starker, more efficient, and better handled.

Plus, I'm Norwegian by ancestry, so I have to side with those guys.

― Chris Dahlen, Tuesday, 20 August 2002 01:09 (twenty-three years ago)

For some reason I have this idea that Ileana Douglas was the innkeeper.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 20 August 2002 03:05 (twenty-three years ago)

"(You can't kill a dog in an American movie.)" - Old Yeller, Turner & Hooch, Where the Red Fern Grows, et al. to thread!

― James Blount, Tuesday, 20 August 2002 04:29 (twenty-three years ago)

and, yeah the original is definitely better, it's just not as astoundingly better than the remake as say The Vanishing (Dutch) vs. The Vanishing (American) (among far too many examples).

― James Blount, Tuesday, 20 August 2002 04:35 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, the remake of The Vanishing was awful. And the list could go on.

Speaking of dogs: yeah, they kill dogs in Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows, but those are movies about dogs, and about the great circle of life or whatever. And they kill one in Vacation but that's 'cos it's funny. I should have specified that you can't just incidentally kill dogs in Hollywood action/drama films. I'm thinking about stuff like the scene in ID4 where a family is escaping a firestorm and their pet dog leaps through a door just in the nick of time. Easily the most dramatic scene in that whole stupid movie.

― Chris Dahlen, Tuesday, 20 August 2002 12:18 (twenty-three years ago)

sixteen years pass...

Watched this again tonight, and Pacino's even better than I remembered. No histrionics whatsoever. Williams is really good too. Very interested in seeing the original.

― clemenza, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 06:58 (six years ago)

You could say, I suppose, that his performance is somewhat affectatious--he pushes the insomnia about as far as he can--but I find it all very credible.

― clemenza, Wednesday, 3 July 2019 07:05 (six years ago)

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