Wow! I mean really, WOW!!!!!!!!!!

Rating: 10/10 (25 June 2010)

How can someone not love Martin Scorsese? He continually reinvents himself and usually comes up with some of the best films ever seen in Hollywood. And he's also tried almost every genre there is: from deep sports dramas ("Raging Bull") to horrifying case studies ("Taxi Driver") to poignant period pieces ("The Age of Innocence") to blockbuster action thrillers ("The Departed"), he adds a generous touch of greatness to all his films and makes them memorable in our minds. He does the same with his latest cinematic triumph "Shutter Island", a psychological thriller of almost surreal proportions and breath-taking beauty; it's not your typical Martin Scorsese film (then again, no Scorsese film is TYPICAL Scorsese), but his genius is apparent throughout the entire two hours and twenty minutes of the film.
The story follows Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a war veteran who's investigating the disappearance of a dangerous psychotic murderess from Shutter Island, a secluded high-security prison for the criminally insane. The island itself is enough to give you the creeps: the only building is the prison itself, and the rest of the island is a vast wilderness of falling trees and jagged rocks. It's constantly being beaten by rough waves and storms, and the island is situated in the middle of nowhere; the only way in or out of the island is through its feeble port, which is controlled by the US army. The wardens at the island are mysterious and creepy (they're Ted Levine and John Carroll Lynch, the psycho murderers of "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Zodiac", so you get the picture) and the chief doctors and psychiatrists at the prison are even creepier: Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow), very intelligent specialists who always seem to be on the 'patient's' side and who mysteriously are uncooperative with Teddy's investigation.
A patient named Rachel, a woman who drowned her three children, is one of the most dangerous inmates at the prison. She's quite violent (they say), and she lives in a delusion where her children are still alive and where the prison is actually her home and the inmates are her neighbors. During a stormy night, Rachel goes missing from her cell...which is quite strange, given the amount of security this particular prison offers, and she is now out and about who knows where. Teddy arrives to Shutter Island with his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate her disappearance and to aid the wardens in her search. Nevertheless...Teddy has a secret agenda in accepting to help this investigation. As a war veteran fighting in the liberation of Dachau during WWII he learned of some horribly inhuman psychological experiments that were being conducted by the US government on the criminally insane, and he plans to uncover if Shutter Island has some connections to these experiments (which it probably does).
Teddy is a highly tormented man: his experiences in Dachau, where he came in full view of the horrors humans are capable of have left him scarred. Not only that, but his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams) had recently been killed in a fire accident in his LA apartment, where the pyromaniac janitor who worked there had been proved guilty and had been sent to Shutter Island but of whom (mysteriously) no one in Shutter Island has heard of. With a heavy heart and a heavily-laden agenda, Teddy aims to uncover the truth these creepy wardens, psychiatrists and patients are withholding from the world...but Shutter Island turns out to be more than Teddy can handle, and he soon finds himself in a nerve-shattering race to stay alive and, more importantly, to keep his sanity.
The movie has all the elements of a pitch-perfect thriller, and it is just that. It's a thriller that has you breathless from the very first scene all the way to the very last horrifying twist at the end. Over two hours long and it doesn't waste a single minute. Once again, Scorsese gives a heavy dose of depth to his characters, especially Teddy whom we come to understand and identify ourselves with very early in the film. Every single scene is perfect! The cinematography is breath-taking and sublime, the lighting is a thriller's dream of perfection, the sound design and the music augments the film's tension to nerve-shattering levels and the exemplary acting makes the events unraveling on screen and the truths we discover all the more astounding. The screenplay, adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel has little or no flaws, and Scorsese seamlessly weaves all these quality aspects into one of the best films of the year! What can I say? I'm afraid that I can't say too much, for if I utter another syllable of the plot I would be giving the game away, and the individual aspects of the film work in such perfect symbiosis that they CAN'T be reviewed piece by piece lest the film is deprived of the wonder it conveys upon watching it. Suffice it to say that it's one of the best Scorsese films ever: VERY intelligent, suspenseful to a tee, deep, poignant, entertaining...you'll want to see it at least twice; I did, and the second time around it hadn't lost an iota of its greatness. Rating: 4 stars out of 4!! Oh, by the way: I can't fathom a possible reason why this film was left out of the Academy Awards this year. There's no reason, human or divine, why it shouldn't have received some nods. I can only hope it will be taken into consideration for next year's Academy Awards lest the Academy wants to indirectly declare themselves a fraud.