With “Shutter Island,” based on a 2003 novel by Dennis Lehane, director Martin Scorsese crafts a visually effective look that aims to create a journey into madness built around solving a complicated mystery. However, the central character, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Teddy is not that sympathetic. Yes, he’s a haunted, tortured man and while we acknowledge his pain, we really don’t care about him. So after two hours and a misleading series of red herrings, by the time Scorsese gets to the twist at the end, all I could feel was cheated.
It’s 1954 with the paranoia of the Cold War hovering in the background and the horrors of World War II Nazi Germany not too far in the past. On a gray, blustery day, Federal marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) arrive on Shutter Island and Ashecliffe Hospital, an asylum for the criminally insane. They are to investigate the disappearance of a prisoner, Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), who has vanished. Her doctors, Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and Naehring (Max von Sydow) are less than helpful about what’s going on behind the scenes. Teddy suspects that all is not as it seems as he stumbles onto clues that suggest experimentation exported from Germany is being used on the hospital’s patients. Since the story is told through Teddy’s perspective, you have to question his ability to determine illusion from reality. Suffice it to say, “Shutter Island,” full of cacophonous music, moody atmosphere, and heightened tension where nothing is as it seems, turns out to be a big sleight of hand, something I didn’t appreciate. 2/20/10
1 comment:
Martin Scorsese is a Director of over 18 movies and documentaries in his long career and deserves some respect. He finally won best picture/director a while back and it was a long time coming. Unfortunately, "Shutter Island", starring Leonardo Di Caprio, will not go down as one of his better efforts. This film is a dark "hard to watch" picture that is not much fun. We never grow to care about any of the people involved and the story leads us around to one non-existent character after another. After a while you stop caring what is real and what isn't. Di Caprio seems to have developed a style of acting where he becomes the "deep, brooding, sweaty and unshaven" anti-hero that is not very becoming. Skip it.
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