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25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The original & best version of this story..., 15 Mar 2003
A positive effect of Christopher Nolan's remake of Skjoldbjaerg's 1997 inversion of film noir is the fact it has now been given a release- so perhaps people will watch the original, a far superior work to the bloated US remake. Stellan Skarsgard is perfect here as a Swedish detective (there are references to this, reminiscent of Von Trier's The Kingdom)who travels to a desolate part of Norway to locate the killer of a girl. The film opens with a stunning digitally composed shot, equal to anything in such Dogme films as Festen and The Idiots, of the girl's murder in the permanent daylight. We see the killer clean the body etc- this reminded me a little of Twin Peaks and a lot of Peeping Tom... This version of Insomnia is a lot tighter & doens't worry about catering to a US audience- the remake having many elements diluted, which I find odd considering it is such a violent society. Here Skarsgard actually shoots a dog, in order to fake evidence relating to an accidental shooting in fog which saw him kill a colleague (there is no laborous back story of him being investigated, unlike the Pacino flick). The remake uses the pathetic device of shooting a conviniently dead dog- dead humans are allowed, but be nice to canines! Skarsgard's character is also suspect, the scene where he places his hands between the thighs of a schoolgirl peer of the murderee being typical of this- having more in common with the dark world of Paul Schrader or Kubrick's Lolita. The manner in which he entraps a youth is novel & indebted to Hitchcock- though constructed around a sex scene, which is also absent from the original. The female police officer who admires Skarsgard's character is less irritating than Hilary Swank's equivalent- her final actions in the denoument are much more effective than in the remake (in the remake we get a tired shootout & the assumed death of the cop- in this version the cop is not caught, but has someone who knows exactly how corrupt he is- who no longer admires him, & who reminds him he has gotten away with nothing- he has to live with his actions forever. So, closer to the territory of In the Bedroom). Insomnia also benefits from an unknown cast- rather than star turns by people like Robin Williams. Insomnia is an excellent thriller, easily standing next to recent classics such as A Simple Plan, The Pledge & Fargo and is a most welcome issue on video. It is another excellent example of Norweigan cinema & ranks next to such films as Breaking the Waves (which also starred Skarsgard), Junk Mail & Festen. Highly reccomended. Avoid the remake- which is on a par with such remakes as The Ring, Nikita (The Assassin) & The Vanishing; I loathe the idea that people don't get to see the original film. Subtitles aren't that hard to comprehend, are they? & when the film is as good as this...
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