Continuity mistake: When Robin Williams is being questioned by the police for the first time, one of the cops is talking to him. Very soon afterward the cop leaves the room and is walking away. We see the cop in the distance in another room, yet we hear the cop talking to Robin Williams again as Al Pacino shuts the door. Almost immediately, the camera angle changes to the cop as he finishes talking. He is standing in front of Robin Williams again.
Insomnia (2002)
Ending / spoiler
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Robin Williams, Al Pacino, Hilary Swank, Martin Donovan, Oliver 'Ole' Zemen
Walter Finch (Robin Williams) is revealed to be the girl's murderer. Ellie (Hilary Swank) figures this out from looking in one of Walter's books that Ellie had, and finding his autograph inside. She also finds the shell casing from the shot that killed Hap and puts everything together. Ellie goes to Walter's cabin to look for him, but she is met by a hail of gunfire. Will (Al Pacino) reveals to Rachel (Maura Tierney) that he was guilty of falsifying evidence by planting a drop of blood, and this was part of his guilty conscience. Still suffering the effects of sleep deprivation, he finds out Ellie went to the cabin, and drives after her. He hallucinates almost crashing into an imaginary truck. When he gets there, he tells Ellie to give him covering fire so he can get inside the cabin. Dodging a hail of gunfire, Will slips under the cabin and rushes inside. "You forgot the wild card, Will" says Walter, before shooting Will with a pistol. Will recoils from the shot and fires a shotgun blast, killing Walter and knocking him into the water, where he slowly sinks. Will, gravely injured, goes outside and lies down on the dock, confessing to Ellie that he shot his partner but he's not sure if it's an accident or on purpose any more. She takes out the shell casing that would incriminate him, and she tries to throw it into the lake. He grabs her arm and stops her. "Don't lose your way," says Will. He closes his eyes. "Let me sleep." Ellie calls for an ambulance, but it's already too late. Will Dormer dies lying on the dock, finally at rest.
Milly x
More mistakes in Insomnia
Will Dormer: You shouldn't knock misdemeanors.
Ellie Burr: Oh, but it's small stuff. It gets so boring.
Will Dormer: It's all about small stuff. You know, small lies, small mistakes. People give themselves away, same in misdemeanors as they do on murder cases. It's just human nature. Aren't you gonna write that down?
Trivia: Al Pacino's character is named Will Dormer; Dorm is the latin root for 'sleep'.
More questions & answers from Insomnia
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Answer: Plot device to make Ellie look like a super sleuth remembering Dormer even carries a backup. When Hap and Dugger were comparing guns Hap says he and Dormer both carry S&W .45s. This makes the 9mm casing Ellie found a complete mystery to everyone else. So why the switch? Dormer's primary might be empty, but this is the first time Dormer shoots and all the characters act like there are only two shots fired in the fog, so for it to be empty he would have to be terribly sloppy. If he's so bad he forgot to load his gun it's equally likely he left the safety on. Maybe Dormer is just so used to being a dirty cop he instinctively uses the backup whenever possible to create an alibi. Ultimately, there is no explanation for this in the film, and if blink you don't even see the switch and are very confused when the 9mm casing shows up in the first place, if Nightmute carries.40, and Dormer .45, then 9mm has no place at all.
In the Netflix version with subtitles, when Dormer fires his primary weapon, the subtitle says "gun clicks." Dormer briefly looks at his gun and then pulls his secondary weapon. Nolan may have intended this to be ambiguous so the viewer doesn't know whether it was an accident or intentional (Nolan would never leave a "mistake" in the final edit - in fact, in interviews, he said he watched the movie at least a hundred times while editing), but the subtitles seem to put this debate to rest.