The lame twist at the end does little to detract from an otherwise great ride

Rating: 8/10 (21 February 2010)

For those who complain that Scorsese, in the 2000s, spent a decade trying to win a Best Picture Oscar, Shutter Island might be for them. It's essentially a B movie, an insane asylum-based thriller adapted from a novel by Dennis Lehane. You'll probably guess the film's final twist within a matter of minutes, but it doesn't matter too much. It's a heck of a ride. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a Federal Marshall from Boston visiting an island asylum for the criminally insane after one of their patients mysteriously vanishes. He has an idea that there might be something more sinister going on on the island. Mark Ruffalo plays DiCaprio's partner, Ben Kingsley the head psychiatrist of the institution and Michelle Williams is DiCaprio's deceased wife (in frequent flashbacks, dreams and fantasy sequences). They round out the main cast. The supporting cast includes Max von Sydow, John Carroll Lynch, Elias Koteas, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Ted Levine and Jackie Earle Haley. Everyone in the film turns in an excellent, heated performance (Ruffalo is a tad more laid back than the rest). Some of the movie plays out like a first-rate horror story, especially DiCaprio's entrance into the dreaded Cell Block C, which contains the most violent criminals in the institution. As I stated above, it's pretty easy to guess at what this is all leading to, and, when it gets there, Scorsese spends far too long explicating everything. But the very last moment of the film is quite good. All in all, it's a worthy film in the Scorsese canon.