7. Insomnia (2002)
It may seem out of place to have a film by Christopher Nolan, one of the new millennium's most praised (or potentially overpraised) filmmakers. Yet for all the credit he gets for films like Memento, Inception, and the Dark Knight Trilogy, the film that gets most often overlooked from his filmography is Insomnia, his remake of a 1997 Norwegian murder mystery. Moving the setting from Scandinavia to Alaska, Nolan follows an aging cop (Al Pacino) as he investigates a strange murder in a town where the sun stays up for 24 hours every day. As the title suggests, he has some trouble sleeping, and soon becomes embroiled in other, personal mysteries. The mystery itself is entrancing, but Insomnia works because it has something that too many of Nolans other films lack: fully developed characters with real motives and desires that we can care about and relate to. Nolan has always been great at creating cinematic puzzles that are stocked with stunning visuals and set pieces, but too often his characters get lost in the shuffle, merely functioning as cogs to keep the wheel's of the plot rolling. Insomnia, however, is only a puzzle in that the film is a mystery story; the plot itself isnt revolutionary or wild. But here we see Nolan working with real, breathing characters, brought to life by a great cast. It doesnt have the flash or fame of Nolans other films, but theres a very good chance that Insomnia is one of his best films, if not the best one of them all.