meh

Rating: 5/10 (10 March 2010)

i love Martin Scorcese ... just not all of his movies ... i think he is probably the best director alive and the best in the last quarter of the 20th century and the early 21st but Shutter Island is not one of the better efforts ...
first, the good in the movie ... decaprio is excellent as are sydow and kingsley ... excellent actors and handled very well by a great director ... the film is set in the 50s and looks great ... sets are great, clothing looks authentic, etc ... beautiful to look at ...
however, once we hit about 45 minutes left in the movie, suddenly we drop into neutral ... the pacing drags, the ending is painfully obvious and it just goes flat ... this has all been done before but dragging out the 'surprise twist' at the ending only makes it more painful and that much less of a surprise ... not that it was a surprise ... we see it coming a mile away and it's such a standard 'twist' ending i was floored that scorcese bothered with it ... you don't even get the 'twist of the twist' 2003's 'Identity' gave us ... if you haven't seen that, skip 'shutter' and rent 'identity' ... much more suspenseful and the ending is a good hard twist ...
hate to say it but scorcese missed on this one as did most of the people rating this movie ... an 8??!! really ... unless the movie companies have a lot of trolls working the ratings, i really can't see how anyone could have thought it was that good ... i know, it's my opinion and i respect the opinion of others but this is a flat rehash of previous books, movies, etc ... hell, TV shows for that matter ...
disappointed ... but just makes me more eager for his next one which will probably be right back up in the classic level ... considering the only dogs i remember over his entire career were the sloppy and silly 'cape fear' and the really poorly thought-out 'new york new york', he is an outstanding director ...