The Norwegian policier of a few years earlier, and of the same name, is resettled under the midnight sun of Alaska. Fair enough. (The icy moonscape of the opening aerial shots is no less otherworldly.) Both versions, however, complacently advance a lack of sleep as an explanation for all questionable behavior on the part of the protagonist, a big-city homicide cop helping out on a small-town murder case. Al Pacino plays up the sleep deprivation for all it's worth, and a good deal more, looking as if he's trying to win a marathon staring contest and speaking in a come-and-go drawl that sounds less regional in origin than medical or medicinal. Robin Williams, as the coolly taunting and manipulative murderer (a cliché in any language), keeps himself pretty well under control, though he doesn't bring enough to the role to justify the against-type casting. His smirk could mean he's got something up his sleeve, or it could just as well mean he hasn't: joke's on us. There are a couple of intense action scenes that take full advantage of the setting: the foot chase in the fog over rough terrain (best scene in both versions) and a second foot chase across the logs in the river, and then breath-stoppingly beneath the logs. But a faithful remake, a close copy, is not what we would have expected as an encore from Christopher Nolan after his devilishly clever Memento. (Naming the sleepless cop "Dormer" will not pass as cleverness.) It is, on the contrary, exactly what we might have expected of any foreign-born and/or independent filmmaker who wanted to slither into the Hollywood mainstream. Hilary Swank, Maura Tierney, Martin Donovan. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd