In the town of Nightmute, Alaska – “The halibut fishing capital of the world” – where the sun shines on through the wee hours of the night – where essentially there is no night, just a time that isn't formally day – where folks from all over go to escape from “real” life – where folks born there yearn desperately to escape – where cold bodies of water and even colder empty spaces are king – where nature has its devilish way with you – in this town, there has been a murder. No, not exactly just a murder, rather a sickening crime, an unutterable violation upon innocence, and unquestionably the work of a mad man – you see, he washed the girl's hair and filed her nails (both fingers and toes) before encasing her in plastic and leaving her with the trash. And so in a place where grisly murders performed by ritual killers are as common as moonlight in summertime, an outsider needs to be brought it in to make things whole again. In walks Will Dormer (Al Pacino) and his partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), both sent from L.A. to teach these Eskimos a thing or two about police-work – how a corpse is examined, how a crime-scene is analyzed, how a killer is trapped. Only problem is that all people in Nightmute are either born there or come escaping something, as one hotelkeeper tells Dormer, and these two detectives were not born there.
 

This is where the audience sits for two hours: We are outsiders arriving in Nightmute; our brains need adjusting to the endless daylight – and the process is exhausting, but the investigation needs to continue