Shutter Island review

The sole regret I had after watching "Shutter Island" last night was that more thrillers couldn't have a little of this kind of artistry or this kind of eeriness. There are stomach tightening moments of tension almost throughout the entire 137 minutes of the film and the perfect finale that's emotional and gives you that wonderful fork in the road train of thought, to think about it in different ways. Martin Scorsese has also brought us a film with some of his finest imagery. There are scenes of sheer poetry and horror and all played out in a 60's noir film style. After all the hype and release date shuffling, it was damn well worth the wait.

You've all seen the billions of ads for the film so it's no mystery as to why Teddy (DiCaprio) and Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) are headed to Shutter Island. It's also no mystery that everything there seems to either be hiding something or are just being purposely illusive while being interviewed. Ben Kingsley plays the head doctor, Dr. Cawley. First off I want to mention that this is a great role for him after seeing such a great actor in shit comedies like... "The Love Guru" or mediocre action fair like "Lucky Number Slevin", finally we see that old Kingsley that could make you believe anything he says. Cawley isn't as illusive as you might think, in fact he's pretty forthcoming on some levels... but there's always something just out of reach for Teddy and Chuck while talking to him. Then there's the head of the board Dr. Naeharing played by Max Von Sydow. He's a German doctor which begins cementing Teddy's feelings of what's really going on at this mental home.

Like all great film noir, our protagonist is flawed. In the case of Teddy he is constantly haunted by images of his time in World War II. He sees flashes of the frozen dead bodies by train cars and of a Nazi who attempted suicide, but failed and Teddy watched him slowly die in his office. He sees Dolores, his deceased wife. He tries to hold on to her memory as hard as he can, but she always leaves him. He feels some unsung sympathy for this missing patient even though he doesn't know her and her crimes were quite horrible. But in reality there is another reason Teddy has come to that island. This... along with a shit ton of other things I can't tell you. In fact no one should tell you because you need to see it. You need to take this eerie as hell, masterfully made journey.

I will say however that "Shutter Island" may not be for everyone. This isn't for that crowd who goes to see shit like "Prom Night" or "One Missed Call"... yes I know they're very different movies from this, but they both attempt a heavy stroke of mystery to make their films work and they also turn quite a profit to be so shitty. "Shutter Island" is for those who like actually dark movies. Not Tim Burton crap, but movies about killers or monsters, real monsters. This is for people who like "Zodiac" and "Se7en"; for those who can still watch and love Hitchcock pictures and read Kafka. For everyone that digs into Roman Polanski's "Chinatown" and "Rosemary's Baby", hell probably even his new film "The Ghost Writer".

What Martin Scorsese has done is made a masterful piece of mystery cinema. Seriously the kind of stuff we might get once a year, twice if we're lucky and often goes unnoticed by audiences. Finally though I feel like through the massive promotions and star power behind it, we'll have a mystery flick that'll shine up the box office. DiCaprio gives probably my second favorite performance of his, second only to his Frank Weller of "Revolutionary Road", which was damn find work and his emotional pitch was perfect. In a lot of ways I see Weller in Teddy Daniels, but with that 50's noir scowl making him more movie real, than real life. Ted Levine is one of the dozens of supporting people that I must highlight. In his small role as the warden, he provides a humorous, but creepily insightful dialogue with Teddy about his violent perspective of the world. Michelle Williams provides the best work in the supporting cast as Teddy's wife. Her performance is subtle and coupled with Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson's dream sequences creation makes her moments on screen kill time after time. It just works, even at it's most oddly placed sections.

At the end of the day, when it's all said and done I'm interested to hear what people think. Some will be thrown by the finale; others will love it (like myself), but the key is to make you think for a change. So far this year we've seen some great genre pictures and "Shutter Island" is another great one. In fact I'd wager to say that it's the best film of the spring thus far and had it come out in 2009, would've made it in the ten Best Picture category. Movies like this are why we even bother to go at times. Sure it's not a bunch of giant effects and all that, but it's those stories and that wonderful artistry behind them that make us remember moment after moment. Needless to say I'll be seeing "Shutter Island" again this weekend.