Al Pacino and Robin Williams

Tense and twitchy as the title suggests, Insomnia is an anxious and absorbing thriller starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank. Its restless plot concerns a bad cop with good intentions who "accidentally" shoots his partner and is forced to deal with the well-meaning psycho killer who saw the shooting and wants to help both the cop and himself return to their lives as if nothing happened. Moral questions are raised almost immediately. Do the ends justify the means? How many wrongs do one right make? And why is Pacino still talking in that Southern-gentleman-by-way-of-the-South-Bronx drawl he's been reveling in since Scent of a Woman? Some questions are answered in good time; others remain with the ages. Woo ha!

At Insomnia's outset, LA detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino) is sent with his partner Hap (Martin Donovan) to a small fishing town in Alaska ("The Halibut Capital of the World"), to investigate the macabre murder of a high-school girl. And to cool off from the increasing heat of an Internal Affairs investigation into some of the duo's less orthodox methods of solving a case.

The night of arrival, Hap confesses to Will that he's going to cut a deal with the IA department, an arrangement that will also bring down Will's stationhouse of cards. The next day, Dormer shoots Hap during a botched raid at the suspected murderer's cabin. The hunt for the teenager's murderer continues daily, but at night, Will can't sleep. Is it Alaska's seasonal perpetual daylight, the missing pieces in the puzzle, or a guilty conscience that has Dormer kicking off the covers and taping brown paper over his windows? Maybe he just ate a bad piece of halibut.

It isn't long before Mork, err, Robin Williams appears as novelist Walter Finch, first on the phone, leaving mysterious messages as Dormer's new "partner" and offering knowing sympathies about the detective's sleepless situation. A search of the victim's book bag leads Will to Walt's apartment and a vigorous chase ensues culminating in an impressive trapped underwater escape sequence. Reluctantly, Dormer is drawn into Finch's plot to pin the girl's murder on Randy (Jonathan Jackson), the victim's punk boyfriend – complete with cool haircut, cigarettes, motorcycle, and who also happened to be banging her best friend. In exchange for Dormer's cooperation, Finch won't sing about Will shooting his partner and he can return to LA with his latest sensational case cracked and no one to back up the Internal Affairs investigation.

Can Dormer's conscience allow an innocent low life to go to jail, even if it saves his career? Can Dormer let Finch, a potential serial killer, just fly the coop? Finally, there's Ellie Bar (Hilary Swank), the local cop and the town's Nancy Drew. Ellie is also a student of Dormer's detective theories and is slowly seeing the holes in her mentor's story about Hap's death. As she learns the truth and witnesses its bloody aftermath, will she be true to her hero and if so how long will it be before she starts losing sleep herself?

To his credit, Robin Williams is cooler than a frozen cod in his most menacing part since Mrs. Doubtfire. And much like her character Officer Ellie, Miss Swank does a fine job of not talking too much and staying in the shadows. Director Christopher Nolan (Memento) has made Insomnia an intriguing morality tale for adult tastes. And one that still packs enough firepower to keep all but the most chronic adrenaline junkies wide awake.