White Night Pursuit” (English name: Insomnia, director: Christopher Nolan, produced in 2002), starring Al Pacino and Robin Williams two movie stars, the lineup is quite powerful. After watching the movie deeply impressed by the acting skills of the two film stars. The film tells the story of two Los Angeles police officers who went to Alaska to solve a murder case. The film mainly consists of two stories intertwined, one is the present tense, the process of chasing the murderer, and the other is the story of catching the child abuser and killer a year ago.
The film tells the story of two policemen and policewomen. One is the story of Domer and his partner, Harper, and the other is the story of Domer and a local policewoman, Burl. A cop from Los Angeles, Dormer (played by Al Pacino) and Harper are a pair of partners who have solved several cases together, but Dormer is unscrupulous in solving cases and is therefore targeted by the police internal investigation division. Before leaving for Alaska, Harper has made a deal with the investigation department to give up Domer in order to save himself. Since the two men set foot on Alaskan soil, they began a struggle between cooperation and confrontation. Eventually, in a foggy chase to track down the killer, Dormer misses and kills Dormer.
Fearing that the outside world would think he had killed someone, Dormer perjured himself by saying that the murderer had killed Dormer, which set the stage for the subsequent deal between Dormer and the killer.
The other cop vs. cop story is a coming-of-age type of story. The film begins with a scene in which an Alaskan policewoman, Burr, admires Dormer. As a motivated police officer, she has been studying criminal case solving skills, and has studied Domer’s successful cases the most. But because there are almost no big cases in a small town like Alaska, she has been stuck in the theoretical stage.
The arrival of Dormer, not only let the policewoman meet her idol with her own eyes, but more importantly, let her get Dormer’s careful guidance. With the reminder and encouragement of Dormer, she investigated the case within a case, and finally solved the case and caught the murderer and Dormer in one go.
In a police film with the theme of justice, the police actually reached an agreement with the vicious criminals, such a bridge is indeed rare. But this film is a monstrous relationship that destroys the scales of every viewer’s heart. The killer, Walter Finch (played by Robin Williams), sees Dormer’s accidental killing of Harper in the fog and learns through news reports that Dormer framed him. Walter, who is a novelist, soon finds out about Dormer’s difficult situation, so he uses it to blackmail Dormer and force Dormer to make a deal with him.
Of course, as a police officer for more than 20 years, solving numerous major cases, Domer obviously will not be easily led by Walter’s nose. He planned and implemented a plan to hide the gun and plant the evidence, just waiting for Walter to be arrested and imprisoned. He did not expect that Walter is also a connoisseur of crime and reconnaissance, not only to lead Domer’s gun possession and planting plan to another scapegoat, but also to Domer’s army.
Domer watched things take a step in an uncontrollable direction: the boyfriend of the murder victim was arrested for taking the blame, the real killer Walt was free, and he was freed from the internal investigation led by Harper. A lifetime vow to bring the criminals to justice, the rookie detective released the homicide perpetrator, the knotted drama will end like this? Of course not.
With the arrival of summer, Alaska enters a period of white nights for more than three months, during which Alaska becomes a veritable Empire of the Sun. Domer has been suffering from insomnia because of the falsification of evidence that threw a child abuser into prison a year ago. After arriving in Alaska, the omnipresent light kept Domer awake at night, and he kept flashing images of the evidence he had forged.
The law is Domer’s rule, and he has lost some of his principles in the last case. The agreement with Walter’s killer has made him lose even more of his principles. He also felt remorse for losing his principles step by step, but as Walter described his murderous process, it was from the beginning of one hit to two hits, then to ten hits, then to a necking, and finally to a killing. Thus, Domer surprisingly slipped to the point of complicity with the killer.
Just as he was about to leave Alaska, Domer had a brief exchange with his landlord and suddenly realized how he had changed. He decided to find his principles and his righteous self. He dragged his sleepless body for six nights to Walter’s cabin at the lake to bring Walter to justice. As a result, Pearl found out the truth about the case within a case before he did, and had already gone to Walter’s lake house.
In the end, personal principles prevailed over evasion, and Domer died to obtain the final redemption. When policewoman Berle was about to throw away the bullet casing that proved Domer had accidentally killed his partner, Domer stopped her and he uttered his last words, “Remember your principles”.Remember your principles His words are not just another classic quote to Berle, but also the exhilaration of having given up but rediscovered his principles. Finally he was able to close his eyes in the middle of the white night, but this sleep became the end of his life.
Everyone has their own principles, but various interests will slowly tempt people to touch the bottom line, and finally these once adhere to the principle was eaten up step by step, until the principle of abandonment. Perhaps the director is trying to tell us this true meaning of life through this film.
