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Insomnia: Al Pacino’s Leather Jacket in the Alaskan Midnight Sun

Nick (luckystrike721)
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Al Pacino as Will Dormer in Insomnia (2002)

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Al Pacino as Will Dormer, shrewd but increasingly sleepy LAPD detective

Northern Alaska, June 2002

Film: Insomnia
Release Date: May 22, 2002
Director: Christopher Nolan
Costume Designer: Tish Monaghan

WARNING! Spoilers ahead!

Background

By this time in mid-May, towns like Utqiagvik (formerly Barrow) in the northern tip of Alaska are experiencing the midnight sun, typically lasting 83 days from May 10th or 11th through the beginning of August. The mid-June setting of Insomnia—to date, the only film Christopher Nolan directed without an official writing credit—is set during this phenomenon, to the initial puzzlement of legendary LAPD homicide detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino), visiting on request to help solve the murder of young high school student.

Facing Internal Affairs scrutiny back in Los Angeles, Dormer and his partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) travel to the “halibut capital of the world”: the fictional town of Nightmute in a remote corner of Alaska where the entire month of June is bathed in sunlight for 24 hours each day. The drowsy Dormer’s investigation brings him in contact with colorful local characters like the “wild card”-wielding pulp detective novelist Walter Finch (Robin Williams) and local detective Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank), who giddily assists the detective she has long idolized.

The result of Nolan’s determination to remake Erik Skjoldbjærg’s 1997 Norwegian film of the same name, Insomnia premiered at the first annual Tribeca Festival, less than three weeks before its wider release 24 years ago today on May 22, 2002. Stunningly photographed by cinematographer Wally Pfister, Insomnia makes the most of its setting—filmed on location between Valdez, Alaska and British Columbia.

What’d He Wear?

Will Dormer’s wardrobe has been requested by several BAMF Style readers over the years, though his leather-over-tailoring ensemble was not above in-universe criticism, as the late Kay’s high-school boyfriend Randy Stetz (Jonathan Jackson) barks during his questioning: “Just a little prick in a leather jacket! What the fuck do you know?”

The Leather Coat and Suit

A living legend among detectives, Dormer dresses the part by draping himself in a dark leather car coat rather than more pedestrian outerwear—likely glad he gets more of an opportunity to wear it in Alaska than he would at home in sunny L.A.

The worn, heavy-duty cowhide leather shell is a deep, dark brown with a reddish tint, cut to a ventless thigh length that extends just beyond the hem of his suit jacket beneath it. Styled with a ’70s-informed swagger, the coat has straight horizontal yokes across the front and back, a narrow ulster-style collar, and four oxblood plastic buttons up the single-breasted front. The set-in sleeves are finished with plain cuffs, and slanted pockets are positioned at hand level on each side.

Dormer wears the same suit throughout his entire investigation in Alaska, crafted from a dark-gray worsted wool with a subdued multi-stripe that adds a blue cast. The single-breasted jacket follows a conventional non-vented cut for the era, with a roomy fit that still bulks out over his twin gun holsters. Notch lapels roll to a two-button stance. The shoulders are padded straight and wide, with roped heads crowning the sleeves that finish with four-button cuffs. Its welted breast pocket and straight flapped hip pockets have been de rigueur for men’s business tailoring for decades.

In the years following 2000, pleats were still common but increasingly unfashionable. An older detective like Dormer, played by the sixtysomething Al Pacino, would be less informed by trends so his suit’s matching trousers are still rigged with single reverse-facing pleats on each side, which also continues the voluminous cut from his jackets into his trousers. He holds them up with a black leather belt that features black edge-stitching and a silver-toned squared single-prong buckle. The trousers have side pockets, jetted back pockets with a button through the right-side pocket, and plain-hemmed bottoms.

I know you’ve got insomnia, but this is no place for a nap, Will!

Dormer plods through Alaska in quintessential “cop shoes”: a clunky, chunky set of plain-toe five-eyelet derbies swathed in matte black leather uppers fused to black leather outsoles. While presentable enough to accompany Dormer’s suits, the shoes are comfortable and durable enough to withstand being worn for hours, especially when those hours include the occasional foot chase or gunfight. He wears them with plain black socks.

Dormer’s Shirts and Ties

Dormer’s shirts reflect his declining mental and physical state over the course of Insomnia. He arrives wearing crisp white shirts and neat ties, though his shirts get darker as his insomnia intensifies, until he’s totally abandoned his professional button-up shirts for soft-knit dark shirts that look rumpled and wrinkled as Dormer attempts to sleep in them between pursuits.

His initial white shirts are a plain, crisp cotton, styled with a spread collar that tapers to minimal tie space, a breast pocket reinforced with a horizontal yoke straight across the top, single-button rounded cuffs, and a faux-front placket. The tie for his arrival in Alaska is patterned with sets of rust and tan squares spaced out alternating “uphill” stripe-like motifs against a woven rust-toned ground.

Also with his white shirt, Dormer next wears a blue woven silk tie with an alternating repeating pattern of two-tone squares and smaller two-tone medallions.

One of the few times that Dormer actually removes his leather jacket is to put on a more weather-resistant windbreaker when staking out the cabin where Eckhart gets shot. Embroidered with a badge on the upper left breast, this roomy jacket has a dark-blue polyester shell, with a nickel straight-zip up the front reinforced by a snap-front storm fly that extends up to the funnel-neck that Dormer wears folded down rather than zipped against his throat. The thigh-length windbreaker has buckle-adjustable straps on each side of the waist hem. The flapped chest pockets and straight zip-up side pockets are supplemented by a flapped utility pocket over the upper right sleeve. Snap-fastened straps adjust the fit over the cuffs.

As things take a darker turn, so do Dormer’s shirts. He next wears a dark-gray twill shirt that could have been from Vincent Hanna‘s closet, styled with a spread collar, breast pocket, and button cuffs. His tie echoes the Turnbull & Asser neckwear that Pierce Brosnan’s 007 wore through the ’90s, designed with a dark brown-and-navy geometric weave broken up by a tonal square motif.

Dormer sticks with shirts as gray as his insomnia-informed sense of morality, next wearing a gray-and-white broadcloth shirt that presents a light-gray finish. This shirt has a semi-spread collar, plain button-up front, breast pocket, and button cuffs. He wears this with his most conventional tie yet, featuring a neatly organized field of white dots against a crimson-red silk ground.

Dormer debuts his knitted polo era with a long-sleeved black soft-knit pullover that he wears with his usual suit to the funeral of murdered high-schooler Kay Connell (Crystal Lowe), followed by a wet chase. This shirt has a three-button top, which he always wears with the top button undone.

For the finale set at Walter Finch’s lake house, Dormer dresses in another knitted long-sleeved polo with a three-button top, albeit in a mottled charcoal-gray.

Dormer exclusively wears white cotton short-sleeved undershirts with a V-neck, showing his yellow-gold cross worn on a matching gold mariner chain-link necklace.

Dormer’s Accessories and Jewelry

For hours spent perusing case files and paperwork, Dormer often wears a set of narrow rectangular gold-framed reading glasses that Pacino perches on the edge of his nose.

One of the most subtly unique aspects of Dormer’s look is the chunky silver-and-black signet ring he wears on his right ring finger. The face is shaped like a softened rectangle, with beveled silver edges framing a black onyx or enamel-filled center. Mounted in the middle of that black face is a circular silver medallion bearing a stylized four-way cross. Cut with two deep, black-filled ridges on each side, the shoulders taper thickly into the sterling silver band like some vintage college rings.

Pacino was frequently photographed wearing this ring—albeit with the cross-like setting removed from the black surface—in real life, including at the Righteous Kill premiere in 2008—six years after Insomnia was released.

More easily identifiable is Dormer’s TAG Heuer Link quartz-powered watch, sported on the Swiss watchmaker’s distinctively streamlined chevron-shaped interlocking link bracelet that gives the model its name. Dormer wears the ref. WT1110.BA0550 with a 42mm stainless steel case, matching unidirectional rotating bezel, and 22mm-wide bracelet. The round black dial has the 12, 6, and 9 o’clock hours clearly marked in large silver Arabic numerals, with a white-wheeled date aperture at 3 o’clock and plain baton indices for the remaining hours.

The midnight sun calls for cool midnight sunglasses, so Dormer regularly sports a set of dark gunmetal-framed shades with an aviator-informed double bridge in the narrower shape now associated with Y2K-era eyewear.

The Guns

Officer Farrell: What do you carry down in L.A.?
Eckhart (flashing his holster): Smith & Wesson .45.

Dormer and Eckhart each carry LAPD-issued Smith & Wesson 4505 semi-automatic pistols, with Dormer’s in a black steerhide Galco S3H 244B shoulder rig holstered under his left arm for a right-handed draw. Distinguished by its all blued carbon-steel frame and slide, the hefty Model 4505 shares its full-size dimensions, .45 ACP ammunition fed from eight-round single-stack magazines, and traditional double-action operation with the more widely produced stainless-framed Model 4506. Smith & Wesson only briefly manufactured the Model 4505, producing just over 1,000 between 1991 and 1992.

When his Smith & Wesson 4505 jams, Dormer draws a stainless Walther PPK/S backup pistol from the small of his back—firing it through the fog outside the cabin, where he accidentally shoots Eckhart and propels his own narrative with the real killer, Walter Finch. Upon finding the spent .380 shell casing at the crime scene days later, Ellie returns to her case study of Dormer’s investigation into the Leland Street murders, where she had written “Dormer pulled a backup weapon—a Walther 9mm” and envisions a connection between the 9mm Short shell casing and Dormer’s likely backup weapon.

Drawing from its initial early 1930s design for the PP and shorter PPK, Walther introduced the PPK/S specifically for the American market after the Gun Control Act of 1968 was implemented, combining the PPK’s shorter slide on the PP’s longer-gripped frame to combat the new legislation’s weight requirements for imported handguns. The added 4mm height and 51-gram weight allows the PPK/S to carry one more round than the PPK, matching the PP’s eight rounds of .32 ACP or seven rounds of .380 ACP. Pacino’s screen-used .380 PPK was made for Interarms and carried in a Galco S.O.B. 204B OWB holster, specifically model #361 designed to fit the PPK for a right-handed draw.

The unmistakable Walther PPK-style silhouette can be discerned even through the heavy fog.

After Finch drops the revolver he had described as “my uncle’s old .38,” Dormer recovers it and uses it to plant a false bullet inside Eckhart’s corpse so that investigators won’t realize he was shot by Dormer’s PPK. Fred Duggar (Nicky Katt) confirms it was a “.38 Smith & Wesson,” aligned with the Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver seen on screen.

Typically chambered in .38 Special, this classic American double-action, six-shot revolver was developed around the turn of the 20th century as Smith & Wesson’s Military & Police revolver until the 1950s, when Smith & Wesson switched to primarily numbered models and it was redubbed the Model 10.

With its worn blued finish and smooth yet patinated walnut grips, Finch’s revolver could be a pre-Model M&P.

The Smith & Wesson revolver isn’t the last of Finch’s firearms that Dormer handles, as he also briefly wields Finch’s double-barreled shotgun during the final act.

Details about Dormer’s sidearms and holsters are from the 2022 Prop Store auction listing of Pacino’s screen-used Galco rigs and the non-functioning resin replicas that were inside them.

Dormer’s Galco holsters as they appear on screen and (inset) when auctioned by Prop Store twenty years after Insomnia’s release. Note that the weapons auctioned by Prop Store are resin replicas of his Smith & Wesson 4505 and Walther PPK/S.

In the original 1997 Norwegian version, Jonas Engström (Stellan Skarsgård) carries a 9mm Beretta 92FS Inox as his service pistol.

What to Imbibe

“How do you like our beer?” one of the local cops ribs Dormer, drinking a bottle of Midnight Sun beer after his sixth consecutive night without sleep thanks to said midnight sun. The Anchorage-based Midnight Sun Brewing Co. (MSBC) became the second-oldest brewery in Alaska after beginning operations in 1995, drawing from the glacial-fed waters of the Chugach Mountains. Following its initial brews like the Wolf Spirit Sparkling Ale and Kodiak Brown Ale, MSBC has since expanded to more than forty different ales and lagers that range from seasonal and limited editions to year-round favorites like its malty Sockeye Red flagship IPA.

Any Midnight Sun experts out there able to identify Dormer’s specific beer based on the bottle neck label?

How to Get the Look

Al Pacino as Will Dormer in Insomnia (2002)

Yes, all Will Dormer really needed was a cozy blanket, some blackout curtains, a white-noise machine, and some Valium… but at least he’s got a cool leather jacket!

Do Yourself a Favor and…

Check out the movie.

The Quote

You’re about as mysterious to me as a blocked toilet is to a fuckin’ plumber.

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