With Apologies to
Maura Tierney
I regret to say that I have made a grevious, grevious error. A while ago I saw the movie Insomnia starring oscar winners Robin Williams, Hillary Swank, and Al Pacino. You can read the review I wrote by clicking HERE.
Seems like a pretty good review, huh? Well, it is horrible, because I forgot to even mention something that I thought was one of the best parts of the film. And that is Maura Tierney's performance in it.
Maura plays the lady behind the desk of where Pacino and his partner stay during the course of the movie. It's a really small part—maybe a dozen lines at the VERY most. You may know Maura Tierney as the obsessive Lisa on the fabulous defunct show News Radio, or as a doctor on E.R. At least I'm assuming she's a doctor; I stay away from that show as if it were one of the Go-Bots movies. Actually I'm much more likely to watch a Go-Bots movie (for the sheer novelty of it).
She's been in a few other movies, too, like the clunky Sanda Bullock/Ben Affleck comedy Forces of Nature, the Clinton spoof/celebration Primary Colors, and the "funny" Jim Carrey flick Liar, Liar.
But this is by far the best thing I've ever seen her do (realizing of course that I haven't seen ANY of the films I just mentioned up there). Even though she only has a few minutes of screen time, she comes across as such a great presence. She radiates a strange weariness. Almost sexual, but not quite. In just a few scant minutes of screen time she manages to give her character a depth of implied background that just had me floored. It's simply fantastic, and she is completely believable when she delivers lines like:
Rachel ClementI can't judge. There are two kinds of people in Alaska: those who were born here and those who come here to escape something. I wasn't born here.
Her character also has an interesting restrained eagerness, almost like she would like to reach out and connect with the people she meets, but something inside her holds her back. Whe she learns that Pacino's partner has been killed, she says, simply:
Rachel Clement
I hope I was nice to him.
The performance is terriffic and I apologize for forgetting to mention her. And just to finish up this apology, here is a little gallery of pictures of her (she is kind of a looker, you know).
So there. I belive I have made up for any injustice done to Ms. Tierney, and I hope that she can forgive me (HA!!) for forgetting to mention me earlier.
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