Review of “Shutter Island”
You can almost feel Martin Scorsese straining to create some magic in his latest feature Shutter Island, with its pounding music, ominous cinematography, jaw-clenching close-up performances and overblown gothic flashbacks. Sadly the screenplay – a tale of a man losing (or finding?) his mind in a mental asylum - is fatally flawed and the film ends up, after some uncharacteristically unsubtle directing, an operatic curiosity.
Scorsese protégé Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a federal agent who arrives via ferry on a mysterious island off the coast of Massachusetts to investigate the disappearance of a patient from a prison for the criminally insane. The coastline is craggy and rat infested. The patients are violent and obnoxious. The doctors – grimly and theatrically played by Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow – are not much better. To make matters just a bit more dramatic (does it really need anything else?) a hurricane is fast approaching, and Daniels is plagued by headaches and disturbing visions of his dead wife. As he investigates, he is overcome by a sense of paranoia at what is really going on at the island. Possibilities thrown at the audience to keep us upright range from Nazi experimentation to psychiatry wars.
Like an overcooked who-dunnit, the story staggers slowly from one heightened moment to the next, finally emerging at its explain-it-all-at-the-end conclusion, leaving you wondering what the director of such films as The Departed, Raging Bull and Goodfellas was thinking when he took this one on. As Teddy Daniels finds, the trip to Shutter Island is difficult and unsatisfying.
Rating:
I was on the verge of leaving the theatre. The Uninvited, anyone?
on February 20th, 2010 at 3:58 pm |I feel ripped off, after anticipating this movie since november.
I fell asleep during “Shutter Island” tonight. As I was leaving, the people sitting around me said “I wish I had.” I saw the whole plot in the first five minutes and firmly believe this is the worst movie Scorsese has ever made. WOW.
on February 20th, 2010 at 4:05 pm |I was hoping for the next “Wait Until Dark.” It didn’t happen. There are so many great suspense films out there and I expected Scorsese to be really creative and frightening with this one. The acting was believable and that’s what kept us in the theater, but it was not nearly as satisfying as it could have been.
on February 20th, 2010 at 4:08 pm |It just goes to show you how creative editing can make the trailers much more exciting than the actual film.
I agree with this assessment 100%. The movie had great acting and great cinematography on some levels, but it was so boring. Suspenseful moments led to periods of numbing boredom with useless, overdone scenes. The ending was so pathetic.
This is the absolute worst kind of movie: The kind that at certain moments makes you feel like there is the potential for something spectacular, but strings you along the whole way and never delivers. WTF happened?
on February 20th, 2010 at 6:45 pm |A cheap story line with constant flashbacks or visions of the dead. I, too, almost walked out. Bad editing, terrible effects (very evident green screen backgrounds), and a dumb story.
on February 20th, 2010 at 9:39 pm |Perhaps you need to read Lehane’s book to actually appreciate how well the adapted screenplay actually was…
on February 20th, 2010 at 9:43 pm |Did the book feel as theatrical as the film? I get the sense that this story might work if it came from inside the mind of the tortured Daniels - but this makes it hard to translate to the screen.
on February 20th, 2010 at 9:57 pm |Thanks for this good review
on February 20th, 2010 at 10:33 pm |Right on with this review. I just left the theatre wondering why I wasted my time sitting through the entire movie. On top of the ridiculous, pointless story, it was insultingly BORING. Fishing on televsion is more exciting than this piece of pseudoHitchcock.
on February 21st, 2010 at 12:26 pm |“It’s a thriller without thrills, a mystery with a head scratching twist and an exercise in thematic overkill that never knocks you out of your seat.
on February 21st, 2010 at 12:32 pm |It doesn’t even nudge you near the edge of said seat.”
I’m sorry but it seems that for the most part many of you were wielding the attention spans of 10 year olds while seeing the movie, If so many of you claim you were hardly paying attention during the film can you really say the dribble you claim is informed opinion.
on February 22nd, 2010 at 9:57 am |I agree with Kyle here. While this certainly wasn’t a masterpiece, the constant whines I’m hearing of “it was boring” and “they kept talking about stuff” make me wonder how many of you are even old enough to be watching this movie.
on February 22nd, 2010 at 10:21 am |Editing of the movie was amateurish at best!
on February 25th, 2010 at 6:06 am |,,,and Kyle - I believe you mean drivel, not “dribble”.
on February 25th, 2010 at 6:07 am |Ha, so I did.
on February 26th, 2010 at 6:56 am |Excellent Movie - Well Worth Seeing If You Get The Chance
on March 22nd, 2010 at 2:46 am |