Excellent, well-made thriller

Rating: 9/10 (30 May 2010)

While I thought some elements of "Shutter Island" were a bit overplayed in order to superficially ratchet up the suspense (I most specifically refer to the ridiculous music at the beginning which suggests something particularly ominous is about to happen, although in how many films does something particularly ominous happen at the five minute mark?), overall, I found the film a worthwhile application of Scorese's encyclopedic film knowledge to the thriller genre. His decision to do this is comparable to his doing "Age of Innocence" or "Cape Fear" – it is a bit out of his comfort zone. But this is why Scorsese is a great director. As accomplished and critically acclaimed as he is, he is not afraid to push boundaries and attempt to tell a story in a different way, or even to work in an almost completely different genre, than he has before-and while perhaps "The Age of Innocence" is not his best work, it was not terrible, reminding us again how well-versed in films, and also how talented, he is.
Admittedly, he is certainly not a newbie to suspense. "Cape Fear" was a fantastic re-make. I can't think of many better re-makes of films. It scared the pants out of me and I don't scare easily. In that film, he used a terrifying protagonist (portrayed memorably by one of his prime muses, DeNiro) to increase the suspense surrounding a judge who began to fear for his life when a convict he had sentenced completes his term and returns to try and make the judge's life miserable. Scorsese in that film didn't need to use any actual violence or gore in order to scare viewers. Our knowledge that DeNiro's character was out there, determined and fearless to exact revenge on the judge who had put him away, is enough to scare us.
In "Shutter Island", Scorsese delves into an admittedly different area in order to scare us, but once again, the fear of what we don't know far outweighs the terror of some gratuitous, splashy act of violence. In this instance, the film is about a US marshal approaching the eponymous island in an attempt to find a woman who has escaped. As DiCaprio and the excellent Mark Ruffalo's marshals seek answers from warden Ben Kingsley (at his most reptilian) and Max Von Sydow (who, seeming to have discovered the fountain of youth, becomes ever more chilling) about the whereabouts and the particulars of the woman's disappearance, they become increasingly enmeshed in a murky, shadowy world in which motives and simple sequences of events become more and more baffling.
The cast assembled by Scorsese is fantastic, and he gets some wonderfully including some of the creepy performances from all of the leads – from Michelle Williams at her most opaque to the most detached Patricia Clarkson, from Ted Levine as an eerily vanilla warden to Elias Koteas as the lunatic Laeddis. For my money, this is not one of DiCaprio's best performances. It is fair, but his dramatic range in this performance doesn't seem to capture the true breadth of a man who is this troubled. His palette of emotions seems strangely mute for such a volatile character. That said, it is not his worst performance either. Compared to the rather thin presence he summoned in attempting to be a gang leader in "Gangs of New York", this is excellent work. It isn't his charismatic tour-de-force in "The Departed" or even his chameleon-like work in "Catch Me If You Can", but he does convey a man who is ill at ease.
That said, credit for the success of this picture has to go to Scorsese. His technical proficiency and ability to originally and excitingly tell a story are used masterfully here. The film was originally a book by Dennis Lehane (also the author of "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone") and apparently (though I haven't read the book), Scorsese's re-telling of "Shutter Island" is quite different from Lehane's. That it is so well reviewed and not too harshly criticized by devoted Lehane fans is a credit to the originality and quality of Scorsese's interpretation of the book. Many fans have said they saw through the final twist from the get-go and I don't deny that is possible. As for myself, I'm not interested in trying to out-think a director. I watch a film and take in the action without trying too much to anticipate what will happen. Perhaps you are one of those who saw the twist coming. If so, more power to you, but if you weren't trying to figure out what would happen, and were just letting the film wash over you, you shouldn't be criticized.
Scorsese has originally re-interpreted an excellent piece of fiction and it's rare when a movie isn't significantly overshadowed by a picture. Again, not having read the book, I can't comment on that, but this is a well-made, somewhat scary film, so credit to Scorsese for that.