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By Dan Leone

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EARLY REPORTS OF late-summer release Simone notwithstanding, it's reassuring to see that Al Pacino hasn't gone the way of latter-day funny guy Robert De Niro. In Insomnia, director Christopher Nolan's follow-up to the much-lauded Memento, Pacino is in fine form, blustering and brooding with trademark gravitas as LAPD detective-under-fire Will Dormer. When a high school girl turns up dead in rustic Nightmute, Alaska, the local brass bring Dormer and his partner, Hap (Martin Donovan), up from the lower 48 to help with the case. But that's only part of the story: truth is, an internal-affairs scandal is pushing hard on both men, and the trip to the land of the midnight sun is designed to give Dormer time for a think before the shit hits the fan. Hap, a family guy, has already decided to cooperate with the investigation down south, but Dormer is harboring a few smudges on his record he'd rather not have held against him. Alaska seems a temporary safe harbor – the grisly Nightmute mystery is right up Dormer's alley, and he digs into the search for the killer with the kind of smarts that have made him a legend to cops everywhere, including fresh-faced go-getter Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank). But even before Insomnia – a remake of the 1997 Norwegian film of the same name – starts feeling too Silence of the Lambs-ish, a twist makes Dormer and his top suspect, detective novelist Walter Finch (a very low-key Robin Williams) unlikely allies. In short order the film becomes less a simple crime thriller and more a psychological slow burn, as Dormer struggles to keep on top of an ever increasing tangle of mixed-up evidence and even more mixed-up mind games. What's worse, it's summer in Nightmute, and 24 hours of daylight have dragged Dormer's biological clock to the point of no return. Nolan does fine work here – though Insomnia is nowhere near as stylistically inventive as Memento, scenes like a guns-drawn chase through a foggy forest show he's no one-trick pony – but it's Pacino, as a beleaguered soul who reaches a point where he'd just as soon catch 40 winks as catch a killer, who makes Insomnia worth watching. (Cheryl Eddy)