Review: Shutter Island

If you hadn't told me that Shutter Island was a Martin Scorsese-directed film, I wouldn't have guessed. I would have thought it was some lesser-known director who wanted to be Christopher Nolan, and who was also a huge Hitchcock fan. Maybe if you'd shown me Scorsese's Cape Fear first, I might have believed they were from the same filmmaker, someone who wants to revisit and rework classic thrillers, but who loves spending time with his characters so much that he doesn't tighten up the thrillers enough for maximum suspense.

The plot seems straightforward enough at first: In 1954, two U.S. marshals who are brand-new partners, Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), travel from Boston to nearby Shutter Island to investigate a woman who has gone missing from a hospital for the criminally insane. However, nothing on Shutter Island or in the movie is that simple. Teddy starts having flashbacks to his WWII days, when he was was one of the soldiers who stormed Dachau, and dreams vividly about his late wife (Michelle Williams), who wants him to find and kill someone named Laeddis.

By the time I was halfway through the film, I realized that I was questioning what was real and what was a flashback, dream or hallucination. The movie goes through a number of twists and turns until the big climactic reveal at the end ... which is still somewhat ambiguous. Unfortunately, it felt less like a tight suspense movie and, especially at the end, more like an elaborate gimmick. Teddy tells Chuck at the beginning of the movie that his wife died in a fire, and also is having trouble on the ferry because he hates water, and that sets the stage for numerous fire and water references throughout the movie, which practically scream Hello I Am A Symbol.

Beautifully photographed, with some thrilling scenes, Shutter Island is slowly paced enough to dilute its suspense and allow the audience time to analyze too many things, including those unsubtle symbols and dream sequences. This is the kind of movie that makes you mentally rewind the entire film afterwards, scene for scene, trying to figure out if all the pieces really do fit together. Unfortunately, while they might make sense while you're watching them, after the movie ends they don't quite ring true.

Shutter Island is populated with an all-star cast, all doing their best in different ways. DiCaprio has the big showy lead role, but Jackie Earle Haley is equally showy in only one scene where he plays a prisoner. (I love watching Haley these days, but the poor guy is getting typecast.) I also wished the movie had more Patricia Clarkson and Max Von Sydow in it. Ruffalo is a very convincing 1950s marshal, fitting in perfectly, wearing a jaunty fedora as though he were born to it. Ben Kingsley matches him as the head psychiatrist, Dr. Cawley, a character that seems to have stepped out of a Hitchcock movie, James Mason combined with Leo G. Carroll.

Two days after I've seen Shutter Island, I still can't tell you if I actually liked it or not, or if I'd recommend you see it. It left me a little cheated and dissatisfied, and I wish it had been shorter and more tightly edited. Scorsese knows so much about filmmaking and film history that he can deliver an entertaining movie with hints of classic noir and suspense; however, he can't quite make this meandering series of twists pay off as a whole.