...a methodically-paced yet increasingly absorbing drama...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 29, 2024

The only remake Nolan has ever done and the only time he’s never written his own script—Insomnia was his first step in a studio system—this feels the least like a Nolan film, at least what we would come to expect of it based on what came after and before.

| Oct 17, 2023

An electric police procedural drenched in the terror of sleeplessness, Nolan’s remake of the 1990s Norwegian thriller is perhaps his most underrated film as it shows him coming into his own with his command of mood and atmosphere.

| Jul 20, 2023

Insomnia may be an underrated Christopher Nolan film but Al Pacino and Robin Williams elevate it to the next level and make audiences forget that it's an English-language remake.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 17, 2023

Nolan crafts an expertly balanced drama with a surprising emotional underpinning that transcends what it means to be a good detective thriller.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 4, 2022

It’s pretty much a straightforward crime thriller but with some intelligent character twists that push things in unexpected directions.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 22, 2022

Swapping amnesia for insomnia, Nolan again shows he can manipulate a camera and the audience to show a character's fragile state of mind.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 3, 2022

Watching Nolan's final pre-Batman outing reveals a subtle finessing of his M.O. - not just thematically, but visually.

| Aug 28, 2020

Dormer has a weariness that Pacino wears perfectly, always finding some new depth to his exhaustion and despair without ever being a sleepy presence on screen.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 24, 2020

A deceptively run-of-the-mill cop thriller based round an ingenious psychological theme.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 15, 2019

...evocative imagery, a compelling story, and one of Pacino's best performances of the 21st century.

| Mar 17, 2016

Insomnia is not so much about the murder mystery as it is about Will's internal struggle with what's right and what's possibly okay.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 25, 2014

Who allowed these performances, or maybe even encouraged them? Christopher Nolan, that's who. He was so intent on dolloping pizazz onto this story that he didn't notice the visual syrup was drowning a six-inch stack of toaster waffles.

| Aug 25, 2014

In the world of Christopher Nolan, memory is still as treacherous as nitroglycerin.

| Aug 25, 2014

Insomnia proves that Memento wasn't a fluke: Nolan is a major talent with many more good films ahead of him.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 25, 2014

Nolan uses Pacino the icon as much as Pacino the actor, and the latter turns in one of his best performances, almost vanity free.

| Aug 25, 2014

The film represents a triumph of atmosphere over a none-too-mysterious mystery. Which is to say that Nolan makes you feel the end-of-the-earth bleakness of his setting, makes you feel the way it can discombobulate people once they internalize it.

| Aug 5, 2013

With a run-of-the-mill bad-guy actor playing chief suspect Walter Finch, the movie might have tipped too far Pacino's way. But Robin Williams is a shockingly effective counterweight.

| Aug 5, 2013

Christopher Nolan's Insomnia adds 11 minutes to the Norwegian movie of the same name and manages to make everything that was fleeting and tantalizing in the original weighty, literal and dull.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Aug 5, 2013

Scene by scene, screenwriter Hillary Seitz follows director Erik Skjoldbjaerg's original closely, but this remake deepens and improves upon the Norwegian film by giving Dormer a more complex relationship with Eckhart.

| Aug 5, 2013