Shutter Island (2010)

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Leo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a US Marshal investigating a mysterious disappearance on a deeply-isolated Boston shelter island during a burgeoning storm.

How did this psychotic woman escape from a locked cell in a locked ward in an old fort, its walls thick enough to withstand hurricanes or cannons? Why do the head doctor (Ben Kingsley) and his sinister colleague (Max von Sydow) seem to be hiding something? Why are even the friendly people here not quite convincingly friendly? Why do the prison and its prisoners trigger flashbacks to Teddy's memories of helping to liberate a Nazi death camp... and dreams of his dead wife? Why do traumas and unsettled issues seem to be lurking behind every door, in every edifice?

Well, it's tricky, and Scorcese's thriller feels a lot like "Out of the Past" or "Touch of Evil" smashed into "Vertigo" and a modern pulpy psych-thriller like "Gothika" or "Memento" (that I couldn't decide between the two is pretty indicative of my feelings on the matter). Swirling shots of cliffs, dark corners, mournful wind gusts, and countless other ominous portents abound. So do a couple of surprises more than you'd expect out of a genre exercise (which, lofty referents above aside, this is).

I really can't go into it much more than that without ruining it. It sticks with you... and not entirely in good ways, either.

[metirish]

Liked the book a lot , I'm sure I'll see this when it's out in DVD.

[Fman99]

Read the book when I heard that my pal Marty was making it into a film. Thought the book was pretty routine stuff -- albiet in a genre of reading (airport paperback) that I'd normally avoid anyway.

[metirish]

I'll give it a six.....this is a classic case of the movie suffers from reading the rather excellent book..... Dennis Lehane just writes brilliantly and weaves a great tale....Scorsese gets lost along the way....still, I think as endings go it might satisfy.