It's an "eh" for a Scorsese film, which means it's still better than a lot of stuff out there.

Rating: 5/10 (14 October 2010)

With Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese has made the greatest Brian De Palma movie of all time. However as a Scorsese film, Shutter Island is just a bit above average.
Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a federal marshal in 1954 sent to investigate the escape of a prisoner at an asylum for the criminally insane on an island off the coast of Boston. He's joined by a new parter, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), who spends most of the movie as one of the most useless sidekicks in cinema history. While investigating, Teddy has to deal with the interference of Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the head of the asylum, and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), the asylum's chief head shrinker. In addition, Teddy is plagued by memories of his role as a US soldier in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp and by very involved visions of his dead wife (Michelle Williams), who perished in an arson fire. It turns out that Teddy is looking for the arsonist who set that fire and believes he's somewhere in the asylum. It also turns out that Teddy suspects there's some sort of brainwashing taking place on the island that has something to do with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Then after all of that, there's an elongated twist ending that neither truly succeeds nor truly fails.
The modern standard for the twist movie is, of course, The Sixth Sense. That's because if you took the twist completely out of it, it still would have been a great movie with a compelling story that stood on its own. Shutter Island does not live up to that standard. Take the twist out of this film and there's really nothing left.
Of course it is well directed and well performed. We are talking about Martin Scorsese and a very talented cast of actors. But the story is jammed full of things that just don't work as the movie unfolds, like the uselessness of Mark Ruffalo's character and an excessively melodramatic soundtrack, which are explained and supposedly redeemed by the swerve at the end. The problem with that is twofold.
1. You can see a twist coming a long way away. You might not be able to figure out exactly what it's going to be, but there's enough stuff that either seems forced or doesn't make sense to clue you in that something is going to happen. The story doesn't hold together on its own, so you know there's a missing piece that will eventually be revealed. And once you realize a big revelation is coming, it spoils both the set-up and the payoff.
2. A twist can't retroactively make a movie more enjoyable. The clanging off notes in the script that are later justified by the twist, remain clanging off notes while you watch them the first time. It's like the fruit at the bottom of a yogurt cup. No matter how much you enjoy the fruit, you need to be able to enjoy the yogurt you have to eat to get to it. The yogurt of Shutter Island seems overstuffed, contrived and simplistic.
Don't get me wrong. Shutter Island isn't a bad film. It's atmospheric, well paced and narratively ambitious. The movie pretty clearly falls short of fulfilling those ambitions, though, leaving you with the impression that it should be much better than it is. Scorsese and company have made a decent film that many viewers would appreciate. That you can't help but expect more than that, really isn't a fair criticism.