"Insomnia" is a thriller set in Alaska starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams.

It's Director, Christopher Nolan, previously wrote and directed Memento.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review)

Watch the whole programme - 30 August 2002

KIRSTY WARK:
Adam Mars-Jones there was huge expectation what Nolan would do with a $50 million dollar budget. Can he do Hollywood?

ADAM MARS-JONES:
He can do Hollywood, in a way he already did because Memento had an American setting and was an American genre piece taken to pieces.

I'm disappointed in this because he has been treated as a safe pair of hands. I want him to be a risky pair of hands. This had a sombre mood.

I don't think thrillers can be sombre or when they announce themselves sad or about the unravelling of the hero, then I think you feel a bit disappointed in advance. We don't know too much but we know what we're going to feel by the end.

KIRSTY WARK:
What did you think of this idea that the light was the carrying metaphor. Did it carry through the film successfully?

DENISE MINA:
I think it did. I was slightly disappointed having seen Memento that he didn't do more with the plot. It's there and it's in the background and it works well.

That's the best bit of camera work. You expect more than that from him, don't you really? It's pedestrian. It works very well. The plot works very well. The realise at the end is good. Although we can't mention the end, obviously.

PAUL MORLEY:
There is no end.

KIRSTY WARK:
Paul, Al Pacino, he has played every cop possible. Here he is the LA cop facing the end of his career.

PAUL MORLEY:
It's a cheat in the way. They rely on his past cop stories to give this a little bit more weight than it might otherwise have. It's sad in a way that we were so excited by Memento that we were all so cheated by this movie.

KIRSTY WARK:
I saw Memento after I saw it. I had a different expectation.

PAUL MORLEY:
He was beginning work on this movie before Memento. He wanted to write the screen play. He didn't write the screen play of this, where he did with Memento.

That is interesting as well because he had more control of Memento, less control of this because he was interpreting someone else's screen play. You're looking for so much from him now.

I was getting little bits out of it, the shirt having the blood on, little hints of what it could be. We are disappointed because of Momento, but compared to Heat he is no Al Pacino.

ADAM MARS-JONES:
You can't say here's Pacino, we bring his history to it, and then have Robin Williams and say, forget his history.

KIRSTY WARK:
How about the reinvention of Robin Williams?

ADAM MARS-JONES:
I don't think you can shed 20 years of care bear roles so easily. He has to earn it. The fact that the character enters late is a mistake from that point of view.

Also the interesting thing is that when the murderer enters the investigation this sort of film does rack up a notch, as it did in Seven and in the Vanishing. They needed to go further that that.

Once the genre is inverted by the murderer taking an activity part in the investigation then we need to follow that dynamic more fully.

DENISE MINA:
Robin Williams has played this part before of a ruined man. He played it in Dead Again, a psychologist who has sex with a patient and got struck off.

He was much more threatening in that. In this he is like the care bear role. And it's supposed to be shocking he is the bad guy.

PAUL MORLEY:
He also played it in Mork and Mindy. You can't get past it's Robin Williams. That's also a shame for Nolan, given these big actors to play with and you're blocked by who these actors are. In Momento obvious with Guy Pearce, we were in virgin territory.

KIRSTY WARK:
What about the look of it? To me, the opening we couldn't show, is one of the most mesmerising openings of a film. I thought it was fantastic.

ADAM MARS-JONES:
The whole thing is beautiful. I don't think you know it's set¿ you're wise to the fact that time is wrong. The sense of scale you are looking down at glaciers but they look like ticky tacky bits of turquiose ice in a coktail bar.

DENISE MINA:
The chase across the water is fantastic. He is too old to be able to do that. The action movie can't have a hero in your '60s .

KIRSTY WARK:
Are you saying 60 old men can't jump logs?

ADAM MARS-JONES:
I'm saying exactly that. In a film called The Pledge last year, Jack Nicholson played exactly this sort of role. We knew it was his last day in work. I thought the way his character was played was much deeper and the performance more layered.

KIRSTY WARK:
Did you think it was a satisfying see?

PAUL MORLEY:
Because of Memento it wasn't enough. It's highly significant we haven't mentioned the two women in the film. Hilary Swank...

KIRSTY WARK:
Don't have serious enough roles?

PAUL MORLEY:
Exactly.

KIRSTY WARK:
Insomnia went on release today in cinemas and it is the film to stay wake for.