Pretty tedious (SPOILER)

Rating: Null/10 (18 February 2010)

Of course this is impeccably produced and acted (though DiCaprio here might be a matter of taste), but it's a pretty long slog in which not enough happens and the resolution isn't worth the wait. The supernatural elements hinted at by advance materials turn out to be nonexistent.
Worse, this is a throwback to 1940s/50s Hollywood feature in that (HERE COMES THE SPOILER) various action and intrigue happens for the majority of the film...then the final reel is spent with some psychiatrist or other figure of authority explaining at length "Well, what REALLY happened previously was just an elaborate and implausible charade designed by us to induce a healing repressed-memory catharsis in our patient! Now all is well! Blah blah blah blah...." That ending NEVER worked (even in "Psycho"), usually coming off as a con job and turning everything before it into one big red herring. Which is just what happens here.
There are good performances by Mark Ruffalo, Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Haley (the latter two just getting one big scene each). Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams and Max Von Sydow are in a fair number of scenes yet get pretty much wasted in generic narrative-device roles. The movie is of course well produced, designed, shot, et al. But you know something is wrong when you're watching a supposedly terrifying thriller and midway you think "Gee that 'creepy' island setting is attractive! I'll bet that would make a nice vacation spot!"
I realize even Martin Scorcese has to do one for the box office every so often, but this uninspired genre piece (with a story more contrived and less resonant than the prior Dennis Lahane ones adapted for "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone") feels like a marking-time exercise for everyone involved.