Studder Island

Rating: 5/10 (24 March 2010)

Shutter Island is the newest reference point for why I hate movie trailers. Ever since September I was berated with flashing images of "an asylum for the criminally insane" while simultaneously watching some crazy person attack Leonardo DiCaprio. This had the effect of making me think I would enjoy a high budget horror or thriller from Scorsese. What I got was actually a noir film. Not that I am too angry, but why was the film advertised in a way that an audience could misinterpret its genre? As a homage pic, the film gushes with both stylistic and story references to the heyday noir films. It's even set in the early '50s.
US Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) takes a case at Shutter Island (home of the criminally insane), an Alcatraz-like place, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. He is accompanied by a new partner and may have a personal motive to take care of. His wife recently perished in a house fire, and a suspect is being kept there. When he arrives, he is greeted by the enigmatic owner John Cawley (Ben Kingsley). Cawley says everything is under control and offers his help in the investigation. This investigation leads Daniels to many locales all of which feature overbearing, dramatic music. This intentionally distracting addition becomes its own character. Whenever it picks up, prepare to feel tense (you usually do). Scorsese knows how he wants us to feel and firmly places us into his preferred condition.
Daniels suspects there is more happening than Cawley will admit. He imagines horrific Nazi-style brain control experiments may be happening. He continues going to different places as a storm brews. He is becoming too obsessed with finding out what is going on and sees ghastly images of his dead wife. He makes it to the place where the experiments are taking place and is greeted by Cawley. It is now when the almost famous plot twist occurs, and I cannot ethically reveal it. It's the film's greatest asset.
Has there been a film as over-directed as this one recently? Scorsese does too good a job in placing the camera below his actors, dimming the lights, or showing a thunderstorm. His handiness is an attempt to counter the film's gratuitous length of 138 minutes. Additional footage of Daniels' personal life is referenced multiple times as well as many unnecessary visits to different places. The film could be cut by at least 40 minutes and lose little of its story. The movie while "good" under the categorical meaning of that word is a dreadful bore.
While we have now sat through well-directed nothingness for about 110 minutes, the tone suddenly changes once the truth is revealed. And it is at this juncture that I went from passively enjoying the film (enough to recommend it) to disliking it. The film's climax does not fit logically within its structure and lacks the screen time to fit within the story. The "whodunit" comes about and then an existential quandary is presented to justify it. What a cheap shot. It's like leading someone (who is ugly) to think you (who are attractive) want to date them and then admitting it was a prank.
The difficulty in predicting the twist shouldn't be praised. In the previous Dennis Lehane adaptation Gone Baby Gone it was unexpected yet plausible and thus satisfying. I think a twist is meaningless if its presence reverses the entire way an audience has been indoctrinated into a film. Scorsese's ability cannot cover for a weakness in the novel's storytelling and once you have experienced one type of Shutter Island you can't enjoy the other. The novel is probably the better version of this story.
Not Recommended