To Play With Mamets

Rating: 6/10 (5 February 2012)

In scene III, Act II of Henry IV Part One, Hotspur, a fiery, plain-speaking and uncomplicated man tells his wife, Kate that 'this is no world to play with mammets and to tilt with lips; we must have bloody noses and cracked crowns'. It would take, I would argue, someone like Hotspur to sever this Gordian knot which is as complex as anything David Mamet ever wrote. Usually where labyrinthine plots are involved most, if not all inconsistencies are explained in the last reel but unless I missed something that is not the case here. This is what I saw. An opening scene in which a Federal marshall, awaiting a ferry to transport him to Shutter Island, meets for the first time, his assistant. Both men are in civilian clothes and carrying both i.d. and guns. Having reached the island, which houses an asylum for the criminally insane - they are going there specifically to investigate the 'escape' of a female patient - they show their i.d. at the gate of the prison and surrender their weapons. The best part of two hours later the psychiatrist in charge tells the Federal marshall that he is, in fact, a patient and has been for the past two years, further, his 'assistant' identifies himself as the psychiatrist in charge of the Federal marshall's case. If this is in fact the case, why allow an insane man to leave the prison in civilian clothes - all inmates wear white uniforms - and furnish him with (presumably) fake i.d. and a gun? If this is ever explained to my satisfaction I'll return and re-review it.