9. INSOMNIA
Christopher Nolan followed up his brilliant Memento with this more traditional but still original mystery suspense thriller. Al Pacino delivers yet another multi-faceted performance as Will Dormer, a veteran Los Angeles homicide investigator, who is sent up North to investigate some strange serial killings happening in a small town in Alaska. It's a town where the sun never sets, and the insomnia of the title is what Dormer is suffering through during this investigation, as he can never sleep. He also has trouble sleeping because early on in the investigation, he accidentally shoots his partner. The film then gets very intriguing because guess who witnessed Dormer shooting his partner? None other than the killer being tracked, Walter Finch, played very well by Robin Williams. The film's story becomes incredibly complex, as Dormer attempts to cover up that crime, while trying to track another one. And soon, killer and investigator soon meet, where they eventually have to confide in each other in strange ways because of the secret that only both of them share. It's a suspense thriller of wonderful visual atmosphere, elevated by the performances by Pacino, Williams, and Hilary Swank as the young local cop who ends up having to investigate Dormer, the man who was her hero.
8. MINORITY REPORT
Steven Spielberg continues to amaze. He continues to remain such a productive film director, as he made two very good films this year (both of which made my top ten list), and he continues to show that he is one of our greatest and most versatile film directors. His most successful effort this year was his science fiction film from the summer, Minority Report. In this film, Spielberg again launched us ahead in time to examine our potential future, and what technology and our uses of it may hold in store as we move along. This film feels like a more realistic future than his wonderful A.I. did from last year, and has some incredibly powerful things to say about actions that we be starting now to one day come to this kind of police control.
Tom Cruise gives another powerful performance as Detective John Anderton, who is one of the leading proponents of Pre-Crime, a new crime fighting unit in Washington D.C. that uses the advance visions of three gifted Pre-Cogs to see murders before they took place, searching through the visions for any detail that will lead them to the eventual crime scene, where they can stop the crime from taking place and take the future perpetrator into custody.
