“Shutter Island” Review
March 22, 2010
Release Date: 02/19/2010
Length: 138′
Personal Rating (1-10): 7
The “dynamic duo” does it again! Martin Scorsese teams up with his favorite actor Leonardo DiCaprio to make the thriller / horror “Shutter Island“.
Shutter Island is a sort of prison for very dangerous people with severe mental illnesses isolated on, as the name suggests, an island with access to and from by the use of a ferryboat. Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) is called on the island together with new partner Chuck Aule to investigate the disappearance of one of the inmates. As soon as they get on the island things tend to get weird and everything changes for the two detectives, who start to suspect each other of betrayal and in general mess with their mind. I can not continue with the plot without giving away facts from the movie so I’ll just continue with my regular bits of mind and opinions regarding this movie.
Scorsese manages to make out of ”Shutter Island” a mixture of real and fantasy that will confuse you in such a way that you won’t know what to believe anymore. Leonardo DiCaprio makes a wonderful role here and all his character’s visions, dreams and flashbacks all build up pressure for the movie making a somewhat good thriller all the more thrilling and you will surely flinch in your chair / bed more then once. Notable is also the music background witch is so good for the scenes that it will help with the tension more then the images do.
On the other hand I did not like the Nazi bull shit and the images that haunt Teddy. I think that they could have invented something more ingenious then that to make the brain of Marshal Daniels easily “breakable”. Whatever story they would have chosen I’m quite sure that Leonardo would have been up to the task, but the one with the war drama is a bit to handy.
Another big plus or point of controversy for others is the ending. As we get close to the finish, “Shutter Island” brings in front of us a total new perspective that will put everything under a big question mark. For this very reason and because of the closing scene / image I must say I did not fully understand the ending, what is the truth actually.
All in all “Shutter Island” is a good movie with sustained action and one in which you look at flashback as pieces of evidence and not just time killers. Martin Scorsese followed his habbit of making good movies and did not disappoint me with this one.
Verdict: worth seeing. Reason: the merge between reality and fiction is admirably done here and the story is interesting and pleasant to follow. Warning: “Shutter Island” has bits of sort of a horror movie in it and images that are shocking, so for those that do not go along well with this kind of actions it might be better to watch “Valentine’s Day”
Thanks to Cinemagia for supplying images. Trailer bellow:
Thanks for sharing, I found this story, while searching for some free downloads and ran across this website, interesting comments and great points made.
[...] originality of the movie is undoubted and yet somehow a comparison with “Shutter Island” is inevitable. Even though, there are different scripts, different plots, different [...]