[REVIEW] Shutter Island

I don’t quite know what I was expecting from Shutter Island. The buzz is right in saying that the previews don’t quite reflect the movie well at all, but actually this is quite understandable because pegging the theme of this movie into 30 seconds, without spoilers, is quite difficult.

The Scorsese-directed thriller is based on a book by Denis Lehane. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy, a US Marshall who investigates the disappearance of a mentally ill patient from a hospital for the criminally insane located on an small remote island. The patient had disappeared from her locked cell and was nowhere to be found. Teddy, and his new partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), start their investigation but soon suspect that there are weird dealings going on in the spooky hospital.

I was in my little fedora based heaven because the first hour of the movie was shot in pure pulp gumshoe style. In such a context, Leo’s weird accent attempt fit perfectly with this type of storytelling, and I was delighted whenever he said ‘eckscape’ and Ruffalo even says ‘chrissakes’ at least once. The ladies had ruby red lipstick, and the men smoked cigarettes non-stop in their brown trench coats. The score smacked you over the head with drama, and I swear there were at least five actually audible ‘dun dun dun’ moments. There was even a German doctor listening to Mahler while smoking a pipe, which of course is the universal symbol of pure evil.

And then Teddy and Chuck went out in the rain without their hats. The tone, imagery, and even the sounds of the movie changed as Scorsese no doubt was trying to tell us something incredibly profound had happened. From this point on, Shutter Island becomes a psychological thriller involving Leo doing a lot of running around and madly asking questions and sweating profusely.

Was it scary? Not really. Michelle Williams was great as Teddy’s wife. Ruffalo played an adequate foil for DiCaprio’s character. Jackie Earle Haley’s presence is far too brief, but that man has the ‘crazy prison dude’ role down to a science. I wasn’t wowed, but it’s worth seeing.

Also, what’s with the criminally insane and anagrams? I’ve been pumped full of thorazine before and let me tell you, I wasn’t lucid enough to play the jumble.