undone by its lazy, messy and full of its own importance script

Rating: 4/10 (25 March 2010)

The latest picture from Martin Scorsese ranks among his worst. Shutter Island tries to be an engrossing mystery, but the movie is just undone by its lazy, messy and full of its own importance script. A somewhat reasonable concept gets lost in an abundance of surrealism and nonsense. Both director and leading actor Leonardo DiCaprio aren't really at the top of their game. The latter just wanders around the island trying to reveal the conspiracy and meeting strange characters whose talk is puzzling and fractured. What's even worse, less than half way through it becomes apparent that the film can only resolve in one way enabling its used-to-death twist to enliven and assure viewers that the film makes no sense whatsoever. It's only a shame that the actors involved are respectable. Another reason why this film is a misfire is that it doesn't really try to be grounded in reality of any kind. It resembles an artificial construct, sadly not very exciting to watch.