Movie Review: Shutter Island

In 2002, Martin Scorsese took the torch away from Robert De Niro and passed it on to Leonardo DiCaprio, when he directed him in Gangs of New York. Shutter Island is their fourth collaboration. With every movie it would seem impossible for Scorsese to get a better performance out of him, but with every movie he does. It’s a miracle. After Gangs came The Aviator and after The Aviator came The Departed. DiCaprio is an incredible talent and you can credit De Niro for recognizing it very early on. When casting for This Boy’s Life (a film based on the memoirs of Tobias Wolff), De Niro, who played the abusive father, pointed to DiCaprio and said “I wanna work with the blonde haired kid”. That was 17 years ago. It was his first big role and was soon followed by another amazing performance when he played the mentally challenged little brother of Gilbert in What's Eating Gilbert Grape. O.K., back to Shutter Island: way long but it is moderately engrossing. The movie kinda sucks you in and even without the use of 3-D magic, you feel as though you are in the middle of this nightmare. There is something hypnotic about it. Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane (he also wrote Gone Baby Gone), I understand the movie is very true to the book. The exceptional screenplay was written by Laeta Kalogridis (Pathfinder – not great). With surprising little screenwriting to her credit, she does an unbelievable job with this complicated story. It is a '50s style suspense film that opens with two federal marshals meeting on a ferry going to an island that is home to a hospital for the criminally insane. Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) meets Chuck Aule (a surprisingly excellent, Mark Ruffalo) for the first time between seasick heaves and chain smoking. They have been instructed to check out the disappearance of a patient/prisoner named Rachel, a psychotic mother who drowned her children and has apparently vanished. Teddy, a veteran of World War II, has a hidden agenda: he is looking for another patient, a man he thinks is responsible for the death of his wife, Dolores (Michelle Williams). I’m not going to say any more about the story but I am going to talk more about the cast. I don’t know how they managed to put together so many extraordinary actors known for their portrayals of creeps and psychos. Just for starters, there is Ted Levine - Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs and Jackie Earl Haley who plays a child molester in Little Children. In addition, we have John Carroll Lynch from the Zodiac and Elias Koteas who played the very scary, Edgar Reese in Fallen. And if that’s not enough, there is Max von Sydow, the Exorcist! He does “creepy” with very little effort. Shutter Island is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Clocking in at 138 minutes, it is simply too long. Ten to 15 minutes carved out of this film and it would be much better. The music is disturbingly loud at times and 'misplaced' (music should enhance without ever being a distraction). But it is well worth it for the not so unexpected but well executed twist, the stellar performances (Ben Kingsly is terrific as the benevolent doctor), dream sequences and spooky cinematography. And, my friends, right now, there is nothing new out there to see. If you have not seen: Crazy Heart, The Hurt Locker, Broken Embraces, The Single Man, The Young Victoria or Avatar, go see them first.