Shutter IslandReviewed by
Daniel Holloway
February 19, 2010
Though "Shutter Island" fails, it's not for lack of effort by Scorsese or his muse of the moment, Leonardo DiCaprio. Both work to set the mood early, from the first shot of a peaked DiCaprio splashing water on his face in a dingy ferry washroom, commanding himself under his breath, "Pull yourself together, Teddy." Teddy, a seasick U.S. marshal, is traveling with his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), to Shutter Island, a lonely-looking chunk of rock in Boston Harbor that houses a Civil War–era fort turned McCarthy-era criminal asylum. As the boat nears the dock and the soundscape floods with an ominous, pounding score by Robbie Robertson, it becomes clear that this is not a place where our hero cop is likely to pull himself together. Instead, as Teddy, his fedora, and his trench coat wade into the search for a missing patient, things only unravel—for Teddy and the audience. Laeta Kalogridis' script, adapted from Dennis Lehane's novel, is the spring from which most of the big problems in "Shutter Island" flow. Though the noirish dialogue is competent enough, the story is dopey and only becomes more ridiculous when the O. Henry twist arrives late in the third act. Suddenly, character behavior that felt suspicious seems downright ludicrous. Scorsese no doubt believes that he's worked hard to capture the feel of the dark, mid-20th-century crime tales he screened for his cast and crew while shooting "Shutter Island," and thus can ask his audience for the same suspension of disbelief that those pictures asked of theirs. But he can't. The director appears to have forgotten that contemporary audiences watch contemporary films in a different way than they watch the classics. Still, there is something beautiful in the way Scorsese keeps the tension near the breaking point from first frame to last. He gets plenty of help from his cast, including a workhorse performance from Ruffalo; a just-hammy-enough turn from Ben Kingsley as a warden who is part egghead, part upper-crust gentleman; and big, brilliant, actor-friendly scenes from Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, and Ted Levine. Towering over them all is DiCaprio. He is tasked with a hell of a job: to take Teddy from determined cop to paranoid mess to, finally, someplace peaceful, and all with little help from the script. That he succeeds even as the movie does not is a testament to how good he is—and a lesson in the difference between an interesting failure and a forgettable one. Genre: Drama Written by: Laeta Kalogridis Directed by: Martin Scorsese Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley |
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Credit: The Broadway League
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