Minor Scorcese suffers from a lightweight lead

Rating: 5/10 (21 February 2010)

Leonardo Dicaprio stars as a U.S. Marshal sent to a remote and forbidding insane asylum in 1954 to investigate the disappearance of a patient. As he proceeds, Teddy Daniels uncovers far more than he bargained for - or is it? In a movie in which nearly everything is actually something else, the audience is redirected too many times for this to be an effective thriller, and some gaping holes in the plot should relegate this to the dustbin in no time.
We first see Marshal Daniels (Dicaprio) on the way to the island via ferry, with his partner Chuck (Mark Ruffalo). Immediately, we size up our protagonist: prone to seasickness, a little grizzled, possibly wrestling with inner demons. Also has a prominent band-aid on his forehead, and as we all know any time a character shows up with a bandage and no explanation, that bandage will come into play later in the movie.
The asylum, Ashecliffe Hospital, is run by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), a pipe-smoking medical reformer who nonetheless looks down his nose at everyone else. His right-hand man is the assistant warden, McPherson (John Carroll Lynch), who informs the marshals that they must surrender their guns before they can enter the grounds. Again, something this obvious means that the concept will come up later in the movie, and sure enough it does.
Something doesn't quite add up about the missing patient, Rachel Solando. Solando apparently vanished from her room, barefoot, without anyone noticing, on an island. That is covered in rocky terrain. Daniels finds a note hidden under the floor tile that seems to indicate that there's an additional missing patient who's not accounted for. Further galivanting around the island simply unearths more and more facts and clues that don't make much sense. And then we find out that Daniels himself might be hiding something. He fits in very well with everyone else in this regard.
The movie is appropriately shot (by Robert Richardson, who's won two Oscars): moody, unflinching, terrifying at turns, well matched to the setting. But the movie has too many problems to be wholly satisfying. During the movie, one of the characters informs Daniels that being declared insane means that anything you do afterwards can be held up as evidence of your insanity. That makes sense, of course, but the trouble is that that logic can be applied to anything in this movie as well, a sort of self-justification. I Call it lazy screen writing.
And, honest to goodness, I still don't think Leonardo Dicaprio is much of an actor. His matinée-idol looks are already fading - he's got the head of Charlie Brown at this point - but his range hasn't really improved over the past decade or so. He seems to struggle with his reaction shots, and he doesn't have the gravitas necessary for such a heavy role. I'm supposed to believe he's a federal marshal? I'd have trouble believing he's dressed up as a marshal for Halloween. Here, he's supported by a very capable cast - particularly Kingsley, although he seems to be slumming it a bit, and Patricia Clarkson. But for the most part, his character is on his own, and Dicaprio flounders.
Shutter Island is, at best, minor Scorcese, a movie that's high on mood and atmosphere but a little light on a plausible plot. There are too many moments that don't make complete sense when they happen and that can only be supported by the notion that someone - or everyone - is insane.