 It's 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity in director Martin Scorsese's plot twist-filled psychological thriller. Storyline: It's 1954, and up-and-coming U.S. marshal Teddy Daniels is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Boston's Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital. He's been pushing for an assignment on the island for personal reasons, but before long he wonders whether he hasn't been brought there as part of a twisted plot by hospital doctors whose radical treatments range from unethical to illegal to downright sinister. Teddy's shrewd investigating skills soon provide a promising lead, but the hospital refuses him access to records he suspects would break the case wide open. As a hurricane cuts off communication with the mainland, more dangerous criminals "escape" in the confusion, and the puzzling, improbable clues multiply, Teddy begins to doubt everything - his memory, his partner, even his own sanity. Written by alfiehitchie Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman on May 27, 2010 -- Remember us, for we too have lived, loved, and laughed. "Odd and alluring" might be an apt description of Shutter Island, the latest in the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio (Gangs of New York, The Departed, The Aviator) coupling. Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, the author whose works inspired Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island plays out as a mystery without much suspense, but never mind that. This is an exceptional piece of filmmaking that negates the predictability with superb craftsmanship; exceptionally-designed sets, chilling locales, gorgeous period costumes, wonderful acting, engaging direction, and all the other intangibles behind the story more often than not take center stage and help maintain a balance within the film, even when the major reveal becomes fairly obvious to the point of near-transparency about an hour into the film. A stylish noir with bite, Shutter Island feels like something of a throwback movie, due in part to the mid-1950s setting but primarily thanks to Scorsese's ability to work within traditional genre elements while also bringing to the experience a picture that's as visually stimulating, aurally unique, and surprisingly gripping as anything else out there, all despite the absence of a more heavily-veiled mystery. U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo, Zodiac) have been assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashecliff Hospital, a care center for the criminally insane located on the remote Shutter Island, situated some miles off the coast of Massachusetts. The missing patient -- Rachel Salando, a World War II widow and a woman accused of murdering her three young children -- has apparently vanished from the hospital, through her sealed room, past the guards, in the cold, and without footwear. It's too much for Teddy and Chuck, and they quickly believe that Rachel may have had help in her escape, a claim that the institution's head psychiatrist Dr. John Cawley (Ben Kingsley, Species) flatly rejects. When Cawley further hinders the investigation by refusing to hand over relevant materials, Teddy and Chuck expand the scope of their investigation to include both the institution and the island on which it is situated, ultimately unraveling a complex web of lies, despair, confusion, and pain that prove dangerous and inescapable enemies that may alter the very fabric of their existences. To say that the film's predictability after a point is a shortcoming is to miss the greater purpose of Martin Scorsese's latest masterpiece. By the time Shutter Island gets around to confirming one's suspicions as to what's really happening, the viewer's attention has shifted focus from more conventional "whodunit" plot points to a mesmerizing, heartbreaking, and all-too tragic examination of a tortured soul. Shutter Island is a study of the human condition, an examination of the difficulties wrought on the mind, heart, body, and spirit through the prism of unspeakable tragedies -- plural -- that can push a man beyond his ability to cope rationally with what it is that's wiped out years of conditioning, fruitfulness, happiness, comfort, peace, and his own understanding of reality, all replaced by images and painful truths the likes of which no man should ever come to know. Shutter Island -- so named, perhaps, for those objects created to allow the passage of light or block it from penetrating the darkness, effectively reshaping an environment to one's own specifications, wants, and needs -- is about personal defense mechanisms that overtake the body and mind, blocking out and letting in just the right amount of information needed to mask the line between painful realities and promising fantasies. Martin Scorcese accentuates the themes of Shutter Island by capturing an unwelcoming visual mood and an unsettling aural atmosphere that both add confusion and chaos rather than certainty and order to the film. Usually, that would be a death knell in the hands of a lesser director, but leave it to Scorsese to so precisely balance the overreaching story, its more intense elements, and its cockeyed technical style to perfection. Marty even adds an underlying humor to segments of the picture that are neither laugh-out-loud funny nor even mildly amusing, but such elements stem from little more than a look, a sound, something that's identifiable as a bit off-kilter but not always obviously so, lightening the picture's burden and dark mood without actually sacrificing the integrity of the atmosphere. Scorsese also uses traditional genre elements right down to the most base cliché of them all -- "it was a dark and stormy night" -- to astounding perfection, using that atmosphere, as well as its after-effects, to accentuate the story's dramatic and thematic elements. Marty's picture is just as unnerving as The Silence of the Lambs, but rather than find his tension primarily through characterization and action, he also creates it out of the film's many confined, confused, and unsure environments that acts as a proxy for all that's fermenting behind-the-scenes and to be revealed by picture's end. Shutter Island's challenging material -- on both physical and emotional planes -- is handled with a professional ease by a faultless cast that extends from top billing to the last name on the credits. Leonardo DiCaprio has something of a bad rap in circles for being a teen heartthrob; he's grown up now, 13 years removed from Titanic, and proving himself to be a phenomenal actor who's much more than his reputation might suggest. It doesn't hurt that several of his post-Titanic successes have come under the tutelage of Martin Scorsese, but the talent shines through in Catch Me if You Can and Blood Diamond, too, though his directors in those films aren't exactly lightweights, either. The point is that Leonardo DiCaprio is no longer "Leo" -- he's beyond the "oh my gosh he's so cute I'm going to buy his poster at Wal-Mart and plaster it above my bed" phase -- and he has become a legitimate, yea exceptional, actor, one of the best of his generation and proving it again in Shutter Island by successfully navigating what is nothing short of one cinema's more challenging roles of the past several years. DiCaprio is flanked by a wonderful ensemble cast, with film legends Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow chewing up their scenes and asking for more, the veterans positively disappearing into their roles and selling all the major elements and reveals within the picture superbly. Even the tertiary characters with little-to-no dialogue excel; they all seem to fit right in and do their parts to create a seamless and wholly believable environment, which may be Shutter Island's greatest success and largest technical irony. Shutter Island is a "strange" movie, but not in a Terry Gilliam "strange" sort of way. No, Shutter Island is a work of art that seems to deliberately fail to conceal its secrets early on so as to more efficiently tackle the larger issues at hand, namely an examination of the human condition at its most distraught, confused, and corrupted. Reinforced by captivating performances and what is nothing short of a technical masterpiece of sight and sound, Shutter Island excels as a story not necessarily of mystery, but of remorse at the sight of a world destroyed by the sometimes inescapable evils around it. Paramount's Blu-ray release of Shutter Island is another technical stunner from the studio that delivers some of the most consistently marvelous Blu-ray presentations on the market. Boasting first-class picture and sound qualities but falling well short of the more substantial supplemental collection the film deserves, Shutter Island nevertheless comes strongly recommended on both the strength of the film and the wonderful Blu-ray presentation. [Show Spoiler] Cast Notes: Leonardo DiCaprio (Teddy Daniels), Mark Ruffalo (Chuck Aule), Ben Kingsley (Dr. Cawley), Max von Sydow (Dr. Naehring), Michelle Williams (Dolores Chanal), Emily Mortimer (Rachel 1), Patricia Clarkson (Rachel 2), Jackie Earle Haley (George Noyce), Ted Levine (Warden), John Carroll Lynch (Deputy Warden McPherson), Elias Koteas (Laeddis), Robin Bartlett (Bridget Kearns), Christopher Denham (Peter Breene), Nellie Sciutto (Nurse Marino), Joseph Sikora (Glen Miga). IMDb Rating (07/25/14): 8.1/10 from 527,332 users Top 250: #217 IMDb Rating (05/15/10): 8.1/10 from 66,635 users Top 250: #222
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