A disappointment

Rating: 6/10 (23 September 2011)

After all these years, Scorsese is yet to have made a bad movie; while contemporaries Spielberg and Coppola sunk to mediocrity long ago, Scorsese is still one of the most versatile and skilled directors in the world. Shutter Island is no exception; it's not a bad movie. But it's not a great movie either.
Funnily enough, Scorsese, who used to stand at the forefront of avant-garde and artistic cinema in Hollywood, serves in the new millennium as the voice of classic, old-school cinema, often verging on nostalgia. That works perfectly in the often bashed The Departed, which was unpretending piece of straight entertainment. The problem with Shutter Island - an obvious call back to thrillers of the 40's and 50's, to Carol Reed, Hitchcock and Wilder - is that it tries to be more, and as a psychological film of substance and depth it barely succeeds.
It's a terrific success as an entertaining, gripping thriller though - that is, as long as you repress the urge we have as modern viewers to take the twist ending as the most important element in the film; because the twist ending is quite predictable and almost anti-climatic, it can easily disappoint if you put too much emphasis on it, and it's easy to miss the fact that the moment of reveal wasn't meant to be the film's climax. Shutter Island makes no new discoveries - there's no real insight and there's no real mystery. There's lots of atmosphere, solid acting, fantastic music, editing and cinematography, and above all - entertainment. Taken like that at face value, it's quite enjoyable, but don't expect a revelation.