Friday, February 19, 2010
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Friday, February 19, 2010
MOVIE REVIEW
Shutter Island
Unsheltered From A Mental
Storm In 1954
Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo, and Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's "Shutter
Island". The film
opened
today across the U.S. and Canada. Paramount
Pictures
By Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
Friday, February 19, 2010
Following his Oscar triumph in 2007 with "The Departed" Martin Scorsese returns to
Massachusetts with "Shutter Island", a film mired in a primordial swampland of
mystery and misfortune. Dennis Lehane's novel (which I have not read) is adapted to the screen by Laeta
Kalogridis, and the results are at best mixed.
Set in 1954, U.S. marshal and WWII veteran Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) partners
with Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate the disappearance of a missing patient
at Ashecliffe, the state's notorious and fortress-like asylum.
Mr. Scorsese orchestrates a lurid psychological drama riddled with crabs and
herrings you'd expect to find populating Boston Harbor.
Moreover, "Shutter Island" is overproduced with
special effects, which you don't expect from such a master craftsman.
Did the director bring the wrong tools to this
"Island"?
Signature iconography from the director punctuates the film's few decent
moments. Mr. Scorsese, for example, has hardly divorced guilt from
his celluloid characters.
The intertwining of guilt with sin and morality is
conveyed symbolically in crescendo, so much so that it feels like heaven and
hell have collided.
Stylistically the filmmaker's remake of "Cape Fear"
comes to mind, as do Travis Bickle's ruminations about rain cleansing the filth
from Times Square.
Most telling is the sparse but occasionally overwhelming music score supervised
by Robbie Robertson. It stutters, as does Mr. Scorsese, who appears to be
feeling his way through the dark to find the right pulse and tone for his film.
"Shutter Island" opens today, more than four months after it was supposed to
bow. Paramount Pictures pushed back its October 2, 2009 release, and as we
watch we see why.
Even with its brooding intensity, cultivated via Robert Richardson's beautiful,
moody camerawork, "Shutter Island" is a remarkably distant experience.
We burrow deep through metaphor, metaphysics and
perception. Though the film's haunting, salt-watery atmospherics have
immersed us, they do so in shallow, perfunctory fashion.
Top-lined by Mr. DiCaprio in his fourth collaboration with the Oscar-winning
director, "Shutter Island" is packed with high-caliber talent, but for all the
cast's industry the investments pay hollow and underwhelming dividends.
Mr. Scorsese should know better than most filmmakers
that past prime performance doesn't guarantee future fantastic returns.
With: Ben Kingsley, John Carroll Lynch, Elias Koteas, Michelle Williams, Emily
Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Ted Levine, Max Von Sydow.
"Shutter Island" is rated R by the Motion Picture Association Of
America for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity. The film's
running time is two hours and 18 minutes.
Read Omar's "Far-Flung Correspondent" reports for America's pre-eminent Film
Critic Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times -
here
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