Corona | Coming Attractions

Pushed back from release last October by Paramount, to what many consider one of the dead times of the calendar year, Shutter Island is a film that shouldn't slip by. Masterfully directed by Martin Scorsese, who captures great performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, co-star Mark Ruffalo and a wide supporting cast of commendable actors, Shutter Island is something of a throwback to the days of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers of lost identity, character twists and paranoia. But for audiences that have been exposed to just about every conceivable plot twist imaginable, Shutter Island manages to find a new direction to take as its complex and nearly incomprehensible storyline draws toward its conclusion.

In his fourth film with Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio plays U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels. We're introduced to the fed as he hovers over a bathroom sink on a sea-tossed ferry en route to Ashecliffe Hospital, America's highest security mental asylum for the criminally insane. The year is 1954 and Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Ruffalo) have been assigned to find out how a patient in the asylum, locked in her room, disappeared the night before. As the ferry docks and the two Marshals are taken by armed guard into the hospital, Robbie Robertson's superb musical score builds the spectre of threat that hangs over every brick and barred window of this place. There's a little bit of Silent Hill meets Silence of the Lambs at play here.

Before long Daniels and Aule find evidence that not all is what it seems on Shutter Island and that the institution's chief of medicine, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley, looking like he's Professor Plum from Clue) is not telling the whole story. Flashbacks reveal the mental baggage that Daniels carries and the personal connection he has with one of the patients locked up. As a hurricane hits the island and threatens to knock down walls, Daniels search for the missing woman and the secrets to Shutter Island intensify. Going further would start to spoil the experience that remains.

Adapted from a Dennis Lahane novel of the same name, Shutter Island is an engrossing film that you have to pay attention to if you want to understand the full implications of what Scorsese and his team are presenting. The marketing campaign for the picture has done a slight disservice to it, presenting it as a scary film when it's not. That's not to say that Shutter Island doesn't have its moments of shocks but that, for the most part, the film operates at a higher cerebral RPM. Pay attention to what's shown and the payoff will come in the third act. And while I don't expect that every person that sees Shutter Island will like the end destination after all the twists have been revealed, I enjoyed the ride.

Martin Scorsese is one of America's most talented directors. With Shutter Island, he proves once again that he is able to craft a mesmerizing, jarring visual experience with not a gangster or New York street thug in sight. It's not a first date movie but then what Scorsese movie is?

Review Score: 82 / 100