"Shutter Island"

Shutter Island (2010) directed by Martin Scorsese

I saw Shutter Island on the day it came out. When friends asked me about it that night I said that guys who loved The Departed- especially the ones who set the Dropkick Murpheys's "I'm Shipping Off To Boston" as their ringtone- were going to be disappointed.

There are problems with this movie- namely, the story itself. It was based on the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. The story it tells is flawed; I'm not saying it's done incorrectly. I mean the story itself is no good.

Scorsese did an excellent job but there was no way he could've saved this movie.

Because of the story, the viewer- or at least, me- knows too soon where everything is going (and for me that is very unusual; I never see anything coming a mile away). Here I knew (WARNING: I'm going to give away details here) that Leonardo DiCaprio's Teddy was the crazy one and that things weren't really real. An example: the lighthouse. He became convinced that sinister projects went on in the lighthouse. The lighthouse is not even attached to the island; you have to go through the water to get to it. The hospital is sprawling and there is plenty of room in the creepy Ward C building to do whatever secret experiments they want to do. Why take a prisoner through the water to the lighthouse? And up all those stairs?

And as I said, Scorsese does an excellent job with what he has to work with. If anyone else directed this movie it would be unwatchable. All of his knowledge and skill saves Shutter Island from being a made-for-Sci/Fi Channel Saturday Night Movie. Still, there were mis-steps.

Number One: The music. Ominous, then loud; booming and, at times, old fashioned- it was just over-the-top. Example: As Teddy & Chuck (Ruffalo) approach on the boat the camera goes to a shot of the island. The image is not even slightly scary. But the music tries to suggest otherwise and it just doesn't match up.

Number Two: Leonardo DiCaprio. I know he's Scorsese's new Robert De Niro and I know he's trying. I've just never been a big fan. He's been overrated for a long time, since the days of The Basketball Diaries and What's Eating Gilbert Grape?. Still, I believe he has gotten better. In The Departed, for instance, he was excellent. I read a review of Revolutionary Road and the writer picked up on something I've noticed. DiCaprio does not act like a man would act at that time. A young man in the 1950s would talk in a deeper voice and would not be as quick to cry. For DiCaprio it's always the 1990s. Watching Ruffalo I get the feeling he was watching DiCaprio and thinking about how he should've had the lead role, which he could've done in his sleep.

Number Three: Max Von Sydow is wasted in this movie. I don't mean he was playing beer pong between takes. I mean he's got nothing to work with and nothing to do. They could've cast Ben Stein (but thank God they didn't. I can't fucking stand him anymore. I used to like his game show when it was on, but have you been paying attention to him lately? He made that movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, defending the "Intelligent Design Theory" and he's saying that Charles Darwin and science- science itself- led to the Holocaust. Then The New York Times fired him from being a columnist because the endorsments he was doing were a clear conflict of interest and he claims they fired him because of his support for ID).

But anyway, back to my complaints about the story. I did not like the scene where Teddy was interviewing the patients/prisoners. One man had disfigured a woman and Teddy questions him about it. The dialogue was disgusting and upsetting and pointless. Why even include it? It's horrible. It reminds me of the scene in Scorsese's Cape Fear remake where De Niro bites the cheek of that poor woman in the motel room. It's just fucked up.

And lastly, we find out in a long, painful flashback that in fact, Teddy's wife didn't die in an arson fire- Teddy shot her. He came home and found her crazy. He had to fish his young children out of the lake and we have to watch it all. All the while, she's maddeningly crazy and he shoots her dead out of anger and mercy. That's not a "shocking plot twist"; that's just a big downer.

Shutter Island has all the things I love in a mystery/thriller. Characters trapped in a strange setting, a brutal thunder & lightning storm, comfortable chambers with fireplaces, plus Max Von Sydow & Mark Ruffalo- who I like in everything they do. But the events are so sad and heartbreaking- it's such a downer- that you can't enjoy all those classic thriller elements. You just think about those poor kids being drowned by their own mother and then fun-time is officially over.

If you want to see Shutter Island I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. Like I said, it's well-made. It just didn't deserve to be well-made, or made.