Utter Hokum!!!

Rating: 4/10 (21 February 2010)

Oscar-winning film director Martin Scorsese's latest movie "Shutter Island" with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, and Mark Ruffalo, qualifies as his worst epic since "Boxcar Bertha" in 1972. Mind you, Scorsese received an Academy Award finally in 2007 for his absorbing Bostonian undercover crime thriller "The Departed." Previously, he missed bagging the bronze statuette for "Raging Bull" in 1981, "The Last Temptation of Christ" in 1989, "Goodfellas" in 1991, "The Age of Innocence" in 1994, "Gangs of New York" in 2003, and "The Aviator" in 2005. Based on "Mystic River" author Dennis Lehane's 2003 bestselling psycho-thriller, "Shutter Island" constitutes a masterpiece of art direction, set design, cinematography, computer-generated special effects and top-notch acting. Nevertheless, you'll hate this gimmicky claptrap as soon as Scorsese and "Alexander" scenarist Laeta Kalogridis trot out their mind-boggling eleventh hour revelation! Talk about getting the rug yanked out from under your feet! Indeed, Scorsese seems to be channeling Alfred Hitchcock of "Vertigo" and "North by Northwest" during the first half of this portentous two-hour and eighteen minute melodrama before he shifts gears and imitates director M. Night Shyamalan of "The Village" in the last 20 minutes. Contrived and complicated from the start, this gloomy Gothic mystery thriller about a Houdini-like escape from a Federal maximum security asylum for the criminally insane, which resembles Alcatraz in Boston Harbor, is as delusional as a dog chasing its tail. Visually, "Shutter Island" could pass muster if it had stuck to its fairly predictable police procedural plot. Unfortunately, Scorsese weaves quite a tale that takes some strange turns before the bottom falls out. People that hate movies about elaborate mind games that lead them by the nose through a maze and then surprise them with a bad ending won't enjoy "Shutter Island." Meantime, audiences scavenging for visceral shocks to chill themselves are going to be sorely disappointed.
"Shutter Island" opens in 1954 in the Boston Harbor Islands as a storm is brewing offshore. Hard-boiled World War II veteran Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio of "Titanic") and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo of "The Last Castle") are U.S. Federal Deputy Marshals who have been assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of an inmate patient at Ashecliffe Asylum. Ashecliffe occupies an island of its own, like Alcatraz Prison, and its terrain is both craggy and forbidding. A bald-headed, pipe-smoking Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley of "Fifty Dead Men Walking") welcomes our gumshoe heroes to the island. Ashecliffe is more than an asylum; it is a hospital and a laboratory. Cawley lets Teddy and Chuck know from the start that he favors drugs over lobotomy. He struggles to bring moral order and peace to the troubled inmates, most of whom are murderers. Cawley has summoned the Marshals because a convicted psychopathic killer, Rachel (Emily Mortimer of "The Pink Panther 2"), has vanished from her cell. Rachel is a murderess who drowned her three children. Deputy Warden McPherson (John Carroll Lynch of "Grand Torino") has dozens of uniformed guards out turning over rocks while all this is transpiring. Teddy is just recovering from the voyage to the island. He suffers from seasickness. Cawley offers him aspirin. According to Cawley, when the attendant locked Rachel into his cell, he locked her in from the outside. When the Marshals scour Rachel's room, all they find is a cryptic note about 'the law of 4.' Moreover, Rachel left behind both pairs of shoes, and the terrain is far too treacherous for her to negotiate it without footwear. Deputy Warden McPherson points out that swimming under the current circumstances was out of the question. The currents would have driven her body back ashore.
Meanwhile, Teddy and Chuck are livid with indignation when they learn Cawley let the doctor treating Rachel take his long overdue vacation at the genesis of an investigation. Essentially, Teddy and Chuck spend most of their time interrogating the doctors, the staff, and the patients. Teddy wants to scrutinize the personnel records of everybody that dealt with Rachel. Cawley refuses to open the books because the information is confidential. Initially, since neither senior psychotherapist Dr. Naehring (Max Von Sydow of "The Seventh Seal") nor Cawley will allow Teddy to examine the personnel records. Eventually, Teddy discovers that Rachel could have slipped past one attendant when he went to the restroom. During their wanderings around the island, Teddy and Chuck get caught in a bad storm that forces Cawley and company to mobilize the staff and patients for an emergency. Our heroes wind up drenched to the skin, and Teddy resigns himself to staying on the island since the storm prevents their departure.
"Shutter Island" doesn't look as bad as its plot is. Scorsese creates a palatable sense of paranoia, and the atmosphere simmers with tension. Early long shots of the ferry penetrating a fog bank on its way to the island reminded me of the ship in "King Kong" approaching Skull Island. Unfortunately, "Shutter Island" simmers but never comes boils. Despite "JFK" lenser Robert Richardson's incredibly flavorful cinematography and long-time Scorsese editor Thelma Schoonmaker's brisk cutting, this film takes too long to unfold and its payoff doesn't equal the time spent conjuring it up. A major flaw for any Hollywood movie is the absence of a sympathetic hero for whom we can root. The Leonard DiCaprio protagonist may generate a modicum of sympathy, but he lacks charisma. Nobody in this movie is remotely likable, especially the eerie Dr. Naehring. Naehring and Teddy have an intimate moment in the hallway and Naehring gets a taste of his own medicine. Moments like that aren't enough to redeem this potboiler. Altogether, "Shutter Island" amounts to utter hokum.