Patient # 67

Rating: 8/10 (10 June 2012)

***MAJOR SPOILERS*** Sent in the fall of 1954 to this far off island off Boston Harbor US Marshall Edward "Teddy" Daniels, Leonardo DiCairo, is given a new partner Marshall Chuck Aule, Mark Ruffalo, who came to Boston all the way from Seattle Washington. The case that both Marshall Danials & Aule are to investigate is the escape from the island's top security Ashecliffe Mental Hospital, that's run by the US Government, of child murderess of her own three children Rachel Solando,Patrica Clarkson. Both Daniels & Aule run into a number of roadblocks in their investigation in that the person who runs the hospital Dr. John Cawley, Ben Kingsly,and his assistant Dr. Jeremiah Naehring, Max Von Sydow,refuse to cooperate with them in releasing the escapee's, Rachel Solando,personal medical records! In fact as both Daniel's and Aule soon come to realize that this Rachel Solando may not even exist at all!
As the film plays itself out is soon becomes evident that it's Marshall Daniels who's suffering from a series of jolting and mind bending flashbacks coupled with migraine headaches who's a candidate to be locked up in Ashecliffe Hopital just as much as the escaped child murderess Rachel Solando is! We get to see Daniels's mind start to work on him in two events in his life that has changed him forever. His involvement in the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau in the spring of 1945, when he was 22, and what, in the hundreds of dead and emaciated bodies of the camp inmates, he saw there. What was also playing on Daniel's mind is the cold blooded massacre of over 500 unarmed and helpless German Army & SS prisoners at the camp that he participated in! The second and far more personal event in Daniel's life that's been burning him up for the last two years is the death of his wife Dolores, Michelle Williams,who died in an arson fire of the couple's home set by firebug and confirmed psycho Andrew Laddis played by the Robert De Niero looking,looking as if he's DiNero's identical twin, actor Elias Koteas. As we and Daniel's soon find out Laddis,whom he's been tracking down for the last two years, is in fact one of the mental patients at Ashecliffe Hospital!
Get yourself ready for a number big surprises as both Marshall's Daniels & Aule uncover a major psych ops operation going on at Ashecliffe Hospital. It seems that Doctor's Cawley & Neahring, by copying what the North Koreans did to helpless US POWS in the Korean War, are using the patients there in a number of drug induced mind altering experiments by turning them into mindless and murderous zombies for the US Government in future,like political assassinations, clandestine operations! But what turns out to be the true reason for why Daniels and Aule were assigned there is far more shocking that even that!
***SPOILERS*** One of the best psychological thriller in years that ranks right up there with movies like "The Manchurian Candidate" and 1956 Kevin McCarthy thriller "Nightmare" the film "Sutter Island" will keep you as well as Marshall Daniels & Aule guessing until it reveals the truth about what's really happening in it. The ending of the movie is truly shocking even if you saw it coming miles or minutes in advance! It turns everything that you saw up to that point in the film upside down and even more mind boggling shows who the real villain or villains, as well as good guys or heroes, in the movie really are!