Shutter Island (Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo) : Movie Review
February 22, 2010 by Tony Montana
Filed under Featured, Movie Reviews, Movies
The year is 1954, and US Marshall Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) has been sent to investigate an escape at the maximum security mental institution on Shutter Island.
It doesn’t take long to work out that a mental institution is the last place Teddy should be visiting: he’s twitchy, he’s got a bad temper, and there’s definitely some issues in his past (his wife burnt to death in an apartment fire) he hasn’t really dealt with.
To make matter’s worse, Shutter Island is about as creepy as they get : built in part out of an old Civil War fort and packed with America’s most dangerous lunatics, the armed guards everywhere suggest there’s an awful lot going on that the administrators don’t want made public.
Shutter Island : Home Of The Creeps
As a storm draws closer, threatening to cut the island off from the mainland entirely, Teddy investigates the missing patient, only to discover that not only does her story not add up – how did she manage to walk out of a locked cell without leaving a trace – but the island as a whole seems to have a sinister secret at it’s heart. A heart Teddy can’t help but dig for, even if it destroys him in the process.
Shutter Island sees director Martin Scorsese (adapting a book by Dennis Lahane) in pulp fiction mode a la Cape Fear, ramping up the tension via every trick in the book.
DiCaprio is perfect as a sweaty, on-edge cop in too deep to know which way to swim to the surface, while everyone else, including Ben Kingsly and Max Von Sydow as the hospital’s chief doctors and Mark Ruffalo as Teddy’s US Marshall partner, all project just the right amount of slight-creepy normalcy.
Shutter Island is a film where nothing is what it seems, which does make things a little predictable once things start to come together, but even then the ending manages to satisfy – a rare achievement in this kind of film.
Shutter Island may not be much more than a white-knuckle thrill ride, but it’s one hell of a ride all the same.
WATCH OUT FOR
Yet another pitch-perfect and super creepy performance from Jackie Earle Haley from Watchmen. If you ever needed more proof how perfect this guy will be as Freddy Kruger in the Nightmare On Elm Street reboot [Watch the Trailer Here], then this is it.
WATCH OUT FOR | RATING : 4 / 5
Was completely predictable, but a brilliant film.