'Shutter Island' movie review: Scorsese’s dark mystery allows DiCaprio to shine
U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is trying to crack a case and it’s a nightmare. Literally.
It’s not just that the puzzle is something out of a detective story — a mental patient leaving a locked room and escaping an inescapable island — it’s that it’s giving him bad dreams. Very bad dreams.
But Teddy has his own dark history. And the secrets he’s trying to uncover now only keep drawing him back to the painful memories that keep reaching out from his past.
“Shutter Island” is the locale, and the movie — and it’s a surprising effort from Martin Scorsese, on every level.
Shutter Island
(R) Paramount (140 min.)
Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams. Now playing in New Jersey.
Stephen Whitty's rating: Three stars
Rating note: The film contains disturbing images, violence, strong language and alcohol abuse.
Genre? It’s a neo-Gothic thriller from a man who’s always gravitated toward urban crime. Mood? Instead of exploding in rage, this dives headfirst into sneaky suspicion. Style? An unusual embrace of CGI surrealism, with lost loves who turn, literally, into ashes in your hands.
It’s as startling a change of pace for this director as “The Shining” was for Stanley Kubrick, and often just as unnerving.
Not, perhaps, as satisfying — there’s a big, climactic twist in this tale (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane) that I’m not sure I buy. (It’s one of those endings that send fans trudging up the aisle muttering, “So, wait, then that means ...”)
It’s been a problem with a lot of Lehane’s work. They’re acclaimed best-sellers in print, but turned into moving images they sometimes — like “Gone Baby Gone” — ask viewers to accept some very far-flung final explanations. It’s no different here.
It’s the journey to that point, though, that’s intriguing.
Credit the actors for much of that. One of the great things about being a director like Scorsese — or Quentin Tarantino, or Woody Allen — is that everyone wants to work with you. So “Shutter Island” is the kind of movie that can cast even red-herring parts with whales.
Just take a look at the supporting actors, some here for only a few scenes — Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, even the legendary Max von Sydow. (There’s no Robert De Niro, true — but a mischievous Scorsese includes him anyway, by casting look-alike Elias Koteas). They’re all superb.
It’s DiCaprio, though, who carries this.
DiCaprio — whose once open, baby face has gotten reserved and boxy over the years — creates a man here in genuine pain. He’s seasick. He has headaches. And he has the kind of nightmares that would have kept Ingrid Bergman in “Spellbound” busy for years.
It’s an angry, anguished job (and a nice companion to his work in Scorsese’s “The Departed”) — and it’s put into fine relief by the complementary work by the rest of the cast.
As his partner, Mark Ruffalo draws on a screen persona of slightly untrustworthy passivity; as the chief of the asylum, Ben Kingsley is all snobbish, smiling menace.
Do all the nightmarish images, great actors and odd plot turns add up to great Scorsese? No. Like “The Departed,” (or “Cape Fear,” or “The Color of Money”) this is merely very good Scorsese, with the director not so much confronting his own dreams as interpreting someone else’s.
But even “merely very good” Scorsese is still miles away from most other directors’ best.
It’s not just that the puzzle is something out of a detective story — a mental patient leaving a locked room and escaping an inescapable island — it’s that it’s giving him bad dreams. Very bad dreams.
But Teddy has his own dark history. And the secrets he’s trying to uncover now only keep drawing him back to the painful memories that keep reaching out from his past.
“Shutter Island” is the locale, and the movie — and it’s a surprising effort from Martin Scorsese, on every level.
Shutter Island
(R) Paramount (140 min.)
Directed by Martin Scorsese. With Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, Michelle Williams. Now playing in New Jersey.
Stephen Whitty's rating: Three stars
Rating note: The film contains disturbing images, violence, strong language and alcohol abuse.
Genre? It’s a neo-Gothic thriller from a man who’s always gravitated toward urban crime. Mood? Instead of exploding in rage, this dives headfirst into sneaky suspicion. Style? An unusual embrace of CGI surrealism, with lost loves who turn, literally, into ashes in your hands.
It’s as startling a change of pace for this director as “The Shining” was for Stanley Kubrick, and often just as unnerving.
Not, perhaps, as satisfying — there’s a big, climactic twist in this tale (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane) that I’m not sure I buy. (It’s one of those endings that send fans trudging up the aisle muttering, “So, wait, then that means ...”)
It’s been a problem with a lot of Lehane’s work. They’re acclaimed best-sellers in print, but turned into moving images they sometimes — like “Gone Baby Gone” — ask viewers to accept some very far-flung final explanations. It’s no different here.
It’s the journey to that point, though, that’s intriguing.
Credit the actors for much of that. One of the great things about being a director like Scorsese — or Quentin Tarantino, or Woody Allen — is that everyone wants to work with you. So “Shutter Island” is the kind of movie that can cast even red-herring parts with whales.
Just take a look at the supporting actors, some here for only a few scenes — Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson, even the legendary Max von Sydow. (There’s no Robert De Niro, true — but a mischievous Scorsese includes him anyway, by casting look-alike Elias Koteas). They’re all superb.
It’s DiCaprio, though, who carries this.
DiCaprio — whose once open, baby face has gotten reserved and boxy over the years — creates a man here in genuine pain. He’s seasick. He has headaches. And he has the kind of nightmares that would have kept Ingrid Bergman in “Spellbound” busy for years.
It’s an angry, anguished job (and a nice companion to his work in Scorsese’s “The Departed”) — and it’s put into fine relief by the complementary work by the rest of the cast.
As his partner, Mark Ruffalo draws on a screen persona of slightly untrustworthy passivity; as the chief of the asylum, Ben Kingsley is all snobbish, smiling menace.
Do all the nightmarish images, great actors and odd plot turns add up to great Scorsese? No. Like “The Departed,” (or “Cape Fear,” or “The Color of Money”) this is merely very good Scorsese, with the director not so much confronting his own dreams as interpreting someone else’s.
But even “merely very good” Scorsese is still miles away from most other directors’ best.
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