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Insomnia (2002), plus the death of the police drama film

But sometimes, you can kind of see where the producers were coming from. In this case, the original '97 version of Insomnia is a pretty sweet flick, with a good story and good characters, and not exactly run of the mill. Plus it boasted a great anti-hero as the lead, which is now much more commonplace. Certain influential people became fans of the film and wanted to expose it to as many other people as possible. But what can they do? Get US distribution for a decidedly Scandinavian movie? The mall crowds won't turn out for that. They want their Paul Blarts and Shreks. The average person doesn't want to watch a challenging movie in a foreign language.

So the fans have to trick them. And they do that by remaking it in English, changing the setting from Norway to Alaska (it's still America, folks!) and casting Al Pacino and Robin Williams. And of course part of the Americanization and Hollywood Bastardizing involves white washing the flick a little by making things slightly more black and white (though incrementally so) and making the hero (Pacino) a little more sympathetic and relateable. One can surmise that it helps to have executive producers like George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, who don't exactly have big dollar signs in mind when they work on certain projects (Oceans films yes, The Good German no, and so on).

So they want to get a remake going of this sweet drama about a guilt-ridden detective investigating a crazy murder in a land of the midnight sun, and they get "the director of Memento" to do it, one Christopher Nolan. Of course, this is now 2009, which makes Mr. Nolan forever "the director of The Dark Knight" (as I'm sure every subsequent movie trailer will state for his upcoming non-Batman releases). But this was before Nolan was given tons of money to make mega movies. Here he was given a little bit of money, only $46 million, which mostly went to the salaries Williams and Pacino. And it pales in comparison to the $185 million budget of The Dark Knight and supposed $200 million budget for his upcoming sci-fi film Inception. So in retrospect, Insomnia is like Nolan's cheap and gritty character piece.

And the movie is good. Pacino sleep walks through the film for stretches, but that's kind of what the character called for., what with his insomnia and all. Williams was in the midst of a "I want to play villains" phase, having done this after bad guy roles in One Hour Photo and Death to Smoochy, and does very well in this one as the local crime novelist turned delightfully creepy murder suspect. A couple of awesome actors pop up too, like Nicky Katt (Planet Terror) and Maura Tierney (Liar, Liar and TV's Newsradio). And the story is good, with plenty of twists and suspense, and Pacino's Will Dormer (get it? Dormer? Much like the Spanish verb "dormir," meaning to sleep, which I am sure is very similar in other Latin-based romance languages) has a lot of depth, as he struggles with the consequences of his many actions and his rather inopportune inability to sleep. Of course, have you ever seen a guilt ridden man sleep peacefully?

But there is a problem with these type of movies, crime and cop films. And that problem is Dick Wolf (dun dun). Okay, not specifically Dick Wolf, but he is the mastermind behind Law & Order, and its many iterations which seem to be on television about 20 hours a day. And if Law & Order isn't your bag, there's The Wire, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: Las Vegas, NCIS, LA Law, Miami Vice, Homicide: Life on the Street, JAG...basically the list goes on and on, jammed with different shows featuring the many twists and turns of  law and/or order. And what can movies do that these numerous shows can't? The longer running times allow for stronger characterization, but the stories can't go anywhere that these shows haven't already gone. A big problem is the turnaround time: TV shows can be produced and aired in as little as a week, while movies take around a year to make on average, and these shows have a leg up on culling inspiration from real events. Just look at the recent Law & Order: Sex Crimes episode that featured a Casey Anthony like situation (and guest starring Hillary Duff in the accused Murder Mommy role). The show didn't even wait for the trial, they just made up their own wacky story inspired from those event.s But they've effectively beat the film industry to the punch by doing so.

Crime movies are only left with using the criminal acts as the macguffin for the telling a story about people. Well, that's the idea anyway. Michael Mann's Heat is a perfect example of the crime film using the criminal activity and subsequent investigation as a way to tell a story about a large and varied group of characters. And sometimes you get Insomnias, movies with decent enough stories and great enough characters that it makes it worth while to check out. But when a person can tune their television to the USA Network and see pretty good hour long episodes of intense criminal investigations that actually include interesting characters that grow throughout the season, what's left to be done? For pete's sake, they even got Jeff Goldblum now! Is the cop drama dead? Was Zodiac that final nail in the coffin, the "this is as good as it gets" moment for this genre of film? Will Michael Mann bring back the heat with this summer's Public Enemies? Will a serious-minded reimagining of the Police Academy series be the great rejuvenater? Only time will tell.