SHUTTER ISLAND (Martin Scorsese, 2010) ***1/2

Rating: 8/10 (20 March 2010)

Martin Scorsese's fourth consecutive feature film to have Leonardo Di Caprio in the lead is one that I felt was slightly superior to their Oscar-winning predecessor, THE DEPARTED (2006); undoubtedly, it is a vast improvement over Scorsese's previous movie with definite horror overtones i.e. the unsatisfactory and unnecessary remake of CAPE FEAR all the way back from 1991! Having said that, the film is ostensibly a mystery thriller set inside a mental institution and, reportedly, Scorsese drew inspiration from several noirs directed by Jacques Tourneur and his earlier horror output for producer Val Lewton (whose own last effort in that genre, BEDLAM [1946], shared a similar setting to this one). Although Robbie Robertson's brooding assembled score tends to be over-emphatic, this has to be one of Scorsese's most intricately crafted works, replete with suffocatingly gloomy visuals (courtesy of cinematographer Robert Richardson and production designer Dante Ferretti). Leonardo Di Caprio's performance – as a Federal Agent investigating the 'impossible' disappearance of a female inmate – is arguably his most confident yet under Scorsese's mentoring; however, from the outset, his character clearly belongs to the "nuttier than thou" variety and the much-touted identity twist in the film's latter half did not inordinately surprise this viewer! Without wishing to reveal anything of the labyrinthine mazes in Dennis (MYSTIC RIVER) Lehane's source novel, suffice it to say that the film's plot turns from an imbroglio a' la THE WICKER MAN (1973), by way of elaborate charades akin to THE GAME (1997), into a personality crisis in the A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2003) mould. Aiding Di Caprio in bringing his character's inner turmoil to the surface – and, consequently, appearing to hinder his investigation at every turn – are an impressive array of actors all of whom rise impeccably to the occasion: Ben Kingsley (as Shutter Island's radical head honcho), Max von Sydow (splendidly sinister in the handful of scenes he is featured in), Mark Ruffalo (as Di Caprio's 'partner'), Michelle Williams (as Di Caprio's dead wife!), Emily Mortimer (as the missing patient), Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, John Carroll Lynch, Ted Levine, and Elias Koteas. Apart from Di Caprio's harrowing flashbacks to his part in the liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp (which, we are led to believe, were the reasons for his later alcoholism and disturbed state of mind), there are effective nightmare sequences aplenty (perhaps a mite more than required, actually) abounding with bloodied corpses or dissolving ghosts. Topping everything up, we have a deliciously enigmatic ending that, again, leaves the door open (ironically enough for a movie set on an island prison) for more than one clear interpretation: did Di Caprio fake a relapse and welcomed lobotomy to pay for his grave, alcohol-induced fault of not committing his mad wife at an earlier stage and thus sparing the lives of his three childrenor, was he the murderer of his entire family all along? Because, were it otherwise, why else would he have been institutionalized in this most forbidding of mental hospitals in the first place?!