While the concept had potential - brought out in the superior Hollywood remake - the unfocused storyline and stoic acting made me doze off briefly while watching this film. This does not happen to me often, and when it does it's a sure sign that my mind has wandered.Nolan's remake is more suspenseful, features more effective performances (especially by Robin Williams), and a better sense of the relentlessness of the midnight sun. The original's jump-cut-as-lacuna editing may have been fresh for 1997, but movies like Fight Club and Memento have since greatly refined the screen representation of lapses of consciousness, and this review is being written in 2012.

Two Swedish policemen, one of them Stellan Skarsgard, arrive in northern Norway to help solve the murder of a high-school girl. The killer is almost trapped but escapes into the fog along the shore. By mistake, Skarsgard shoots and kills his partner. He invents a story in which the girl's murderer shot his partner. Later he's invited by the girl's killer to meet at an isolated place. The two agree to pin the murder on the dead girl's boyfriend, an obnoxious kid anyway. But Skarsgard, plagued by his conscience and the midnight sun, has been unable to sleep and makes an attempt to capture the killer. The killer clobbers Skarsgard and then accidentally falls to his death. A Norwegian policewoman has figured out roughly what went on but contemptuously allows Skarsgard to go back home where, it is fondly hoped, he'll be able to sleep again, although we are left with grave doubts about that. The final freeze frame is of Skarsgard's face and everything fades to black except for his eyes, which are wide open and glow in the dark like an uneasy animal's.Stellan Skarsgard is just about perfect for the role of the insomniac cop. He always looks half asleep anyway. He slouches around, placid, bookish, as if his mind were elsewhere, maybe in wonderland. You can't ruffle him. When the murderer shoots off his shotgun into the plaster ceiling over his shoulder, Skarsgard simply moves his head to the side with an expression of mild distaste. I show more animation when the dentist says, "Turn this way a little." It's a slow film though, a story of intrigue and character, rather than a who-dunnit with a lot of ancillary action. What I mean is that it's quite different from the American remake that starred Al Pacino. Pacino is equally good at projecting exhaustion but in a very different way.The logic in this film isn't as clear as that in the remake. Here, Skarsgard can have absolutely no motive for shooting his partner of more than a year. In the remake, Pacino's partner was about to squeal on him for some irregularities to Internal Affairs. And here, all it takes is a single phone call for Skarsgard to agree to meet the killer. Pacino had to listen to Robin Williams sympathize with him about his insomnia. And Pacino's hallucinations were far more vivid -- a massive truck bearing down on him in his lane -- while Skarsgard's are more subtle -- a glimpse of his dead partner's face staring through a window. The remake is palpably "American". It ends with a shoot out that Williams' heavy has never shown himself capable of. Shotguns and pistols bark. Seaside fishing shacks are blown to smithereens. So is Williams, while Pacino dies after a few parting words. The European original ends with a dying fall and an ambiguous hint of things to come. (Those glowing eyes.) Neither film is a masterpiece. They both fit nicely into the generic frame of the guilty cop movie. And in some ways I prefer the remake. It's pace is faster and the characters' motivations are explored in greater depth, and finally it makes more sense. But that stupid final shoot out works against it and it is, after all, not the original, so it gets no bonus points.

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 ****

I watched the 2002 remake of "Insomnia" with Al Pacino when it came out. I found it to be an excellent thriller, not least because of the powerful performances from the actors (especially Robin Williams). But also because of the very unreal mood throughout the movie. Something correlating nicely with the story of Pacinos sleep-depraved cop on mission in Alaska, not coping with the around-the-clock sunlight very well.It was a lot more difficult getting to see the Norwegian original movie. But finally they showed it on TV so that i could record it. Comparing the two versions is unavoidable, deciding which one i prefer is a lot more difficult though. I can say however that watching the original has made my appreciation of the remake even higher. Christopher Nolan is an intelligent director and his remake is great proof of that. He has successfully captured the mood and essence of the story, keeping the most effective scenes from the original and adding other scenes that fit well into the story and help adapt it to the US instead of Norway.The acting in the original is generally good. I find Robin Williams performance as the killer hard to beat though. When it comes to the lead, Skarsgård is even more fit for the role of the haggard and worn-down policeman riddled with insomnia than Pacino. Skarsgård sometimes feels like the actor who gave the expression "haggard" a face.In the end i guess most people in the American audience, and also perhaps most other parts of the world, would prefer the remake of this movie. The pace is slightly higher in the remake, the style more modern and the actors of course more recognizable. This movie also feels a little less polished, but in my opinion it has just as much to offer. And if for no other reason, the original is worth watching because it highlights why the remake is such a feat. Recommended.7/10