The Blacksheep Online | Movie Review: Shutter Island

Movie Review: Shutter Island

March 2, 2010 - 2:00 pm | Posted by: Dave

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley

Synopsis: Scorsese tries something new by making a film about a repressed East Coaster dealing with personal traumas while battling corruption.

Grade: B+

When Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio attach their names to a movie, it's assumed that said movie will kick ass. If they decided to hop aboard the proposed Stretch Armstrong movie, the movie would become an Oscar-nominated character study about an outsider dealing with corruption in a stretchy world (but most likely focused New York or Boston). So it's no surprise that Shutter Island is a great film. It's well acted, fiercely driven, and always kept me guessing.

The film revolves around DiCaprio's go-to Bostonian character, this time Federal Marshal Teddy, investigating a missing woman at a dangerous mental hospital on a remote island in 1954. When they first get to the island, Teddy and his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) find the staff pretty sketchy. The main doctor, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), is unwilling to reveal any patient files and no one is giving them a straight answer. The confusion takes its toll on Teddy who is struggling with his own personal demons including bad memories of World War II and losing his wife in a fire. What starts out as a simple missing persons case soon turns into a question of sanity for Teddy while the audience wonders what's real and what's not.

Of course this plot is seen in tons of movies and "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" episodes. Some guy investigates something, finds the truth, bad guys drug him, he starts going crazy, and then the lines of reality are blurred. When things start getting insane for Teddy, I found myself hoping that the film wouldn't end with some simple explanation. Good thing Scorsese is no amateur and manages to take a plot that's rather predictable and make it something new and exciting.

By the end of the film, the answer to the mystery is less important than the central message: how can you tell wrong from right, good from bad? Every action in the movie asks this question. Is it wrong to line up Nazis and kill them in cold blood? Is it wrong to kill someone who's murdered someone you loved? Is it wrong to treat murderers as people who deserve redemption? Typical Martin Scorsese- I go into his film thinking I'm going to see some DiCaprio bad-assery, and I come out in an existential crisis. If he just would stop constructing his characters so carefully and well-rounded this wouldn't happen!

Don't worry if you're not one of those "thinkin'-types" of people; Shutter Island lets its themes and morals flow slowly through the film so that it doesn't get in the way of the thrills and suspense. Like all good directors, Scorsese proves that scary movies about haunted places don't all need to be stupid, gory Saw films to still be exciting.

The best part of the film is that it's a pretty new film genre for Scorsese. With The Departed he was simply tackling things he'd already dealt with in other, better films. While Shutter Island isn't his best work and is still about cops and how they have to deal with crazy shit, we get to see a new side of the cop... a much scarier side. BOO!