Shutter Island (2010)

Leonardo DiCaprio and Michelle Williams, Shutter Island (2010)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams

I'd heard mixed reviews about Shutter Island. On one hand, I'd heard that it was mindblowing -- one of the best films that people had ever seen. The other stories were not so kind. I was told a few days ago that I had to see it, so I watched it, and needless to say, my reaction was, as the reviews I'd heard beforehand, mixed.

Put simply, it's a sloppy film. This might seem normal -- most mainstream films these days are at least a bit sloppily made -- but when you've got a movie that's directed by such a giant as Martin Scorsese, you expect a bit better. It just seems really choppy the whole time, and has a slew of bad cuts that consistently jar you out of the action.

During the viewing, one of my fellow watchers pointed out that perhaps it was purposeful, to help set the tone and hint at the underlying twist, and that seems likely enough; but if it is, it isn't purposeful enough. When you purposefully go against the norm in a movie or a stageplay, the rule-breaking has to be explicit and deliberate, or else it just looks to your audience as if you're not really paying attention when you're editing. The mistakes here don't seem nearly planned enough to make me believe it.

On top of that, we've got Leonardo DiCaprio in one of his worst performances yet, in my opinion. There's a moment in a particular flashback when DiCaprio truly gets to show his acting chops, but throughout the majority of the movie, he seems like he's trying too hard. He is also considerably younger -- and younger looking -- than his co-star, Mark Ruffalo, and it's hard to believe that Ruffalo's character is his subordinate. I'm letting that slide because of events that occur later on in the film, but it would've been nice for me to believe for a second what I'm being spoon-fed at the beginning of the film.

To be honest, Ruffalo's performance is the only real stand-out one in the film. All of the other actors, including Sir Ben Kingsley, whose character reminded me of a fusion between Batman's R'as Al Ghul and Dr. Hugo Strange, fall into the pit of those trying too hard.

The movie itself tries too hard, too, and in doing so, makes the plot extremely predictable. Everything is overdramatized, and sometimes we're force-fed facts that either we should be able to decipher on our own or we've already figured out by the time they're revealed to us. Add to that that the first thirty minutes of the film feel like a bad Law and Order episode and, well...

It's not necessarily a bad movie. It's actually very fun to watch. It's just not really accomplishing its goal very well, and I was expecting my mind to be blown a lot more than it actually was. Don't expect Black Swan or Inception out of this -- you won't get what you're looking for.

Final Rating: 6.5/10
Notable Performance: Mark Ruffalo as Chuck