Decent atmosphere, but hardly Scorsese's best film or Lahane's best adaptation

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2010)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
It's 1954, and Federal Agents Teddy Daniels (Leonardo Di Caprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) have been sent to the titular island mental institution to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a female serial child killer. It's made very clear from the off set that they may do their job, but they are not in charge and must co-operate with the warden and the guards on the island. As slow progress is made, Daniels and Aule start to conjure up wild conspiracy theories to what is going on on the island and their real reason for being sent there. Things aren't helped when the chief doctors on the island Cawley (Ben Kingsley) and Naehring (Max von Sydow) aren't being very forthcoming, and the pair are left further to their own devices. But as Daniels suffers flashbacks to his time in the war liberating a Nazi concentration camp and his perception of reality becomes blurred, everything starts to become less clear and everything looks set to become not how it seems.
Martin Scorsese has returned with a film that is an unusual branch out from his usual gangster movie schtick, and is a fresh approach for him to experiment with. It's also another adaptation of a novel by Dennis Lahane, after the superb Gone Baby Gone and the very watchable Mystic River. But while Shutter Island is a very well made and tense film, somehow for me it just didn't match up to the quality of those last two films.
This plays as a very long and drawn out, what typically gets called nowadays a 'mind f*ck' film, showing a lead character becoming increasingly claustrophobic and isolated, and being pushed to question his own sanity in the light of increasing evidence everything is not how he sees it. It's not afraid to push boundaries, showing the blood splattered bodies of murdered children, for instance, even harder to fathom for a 15 certificate film. Typical of Lahane's work, it's unflinching and goes straight for the jugular, unafraid to delve into the darker side of human nature and playing for a more mature audience. And there is a complex and carefully structured mystery to fathom through out that you have to pay attention to. Yet somehow it just feels really hard to get in to, and all feels a little too much to take in at once. It feels like one of Lahane's more ambitious works and it works having an expert like Scorsese on hand to oversee things, but somehow their respective styles clash, the tone feeling less riveting and more plodding. There is a tense and decent score, which drives a lot of it and gives certain scenes a more dynamic edge, but it all just fails to come together as a whole.
Performances wise, Di Caprio is suitably intense and unrestrained in the lead role, as a man being pushed over the edge, with sturdy support from Ruffalo. Meanwhile, Kingsley and von Sydow are a well cast double act as the educated but dodgy main doctors, and there's a lively supporting cast in the shape of Jackie Earle Haley, Elias Koteas and Patricia Clarkson.
Shutter Island has worked with some and been a more average affair with others. Like a lot of films nowadays, it may be a 'need to see it twice' affair, but personally Scorsese's last film The Departed really showed his flair a lot more successfully to a 21st century audience. ***