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 ****
Review of Insomnia
