Shutter Island

Film: Shutter Island
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Mark Ruffalo
Genre: Drama
Direction: Martin Scorsese
Duration: 2 hours 18 minutes
Critic's Rating: 3.5 stars


Story: It's 1954. Everything's not right at the Ashecliffe Asylum that houses the criminally insane on the isolated Shutter Island. US Marshal Ted Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives from Boston after a boat ride on the choppy waters to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of the inmates from the asylum. But can he hope to uncover the web of intrigue and actually unravel the mysterious going-ons here, specially when he is confronted by a team of hostile doctors, headed by Ben Kingsley and he himself is haunted by disturbing vignettes from his violent past....

Movie Review: Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese make a great team. After having swept you off your feet with their masterpiece, The Departed, the duo return with a celluloid rendition of Dennis Lehane's novel which traces the degree of violence that is innate in the human species. Setting his drama in an extreme situation, a state-run-institution for criminals who are essentially ruthless killers, Scorsese poses a teaser: Is the asylum more dangerous than the outside world, where the H-bomb hangs dangerously over a civilisation that has still not forgotten the Nazi atrocities. The US Marshal (Leonardo) is haunted by primarily two memories, as he goes about his investigations. The first being his war record where he waded through heaps of bodies before shooting down a battery of German guards in cold blood and the second vision involves the murder of his three young kids, followed by the violent death of his wife.

The Marshal has a tough task ahead. On the one hand, he must fight his own personal demons and on the other he must wade through the web of subterfuge and find out if the doctors, headed by Kingsley, are actually using this asylum as a laboratory for kinky stuff: human engineering and all that. The sudden disappearance of his assistant (Mark Ruffalo) further adds to the confusion, as does his deteriorating physical condition.

This one's a gritty drama, with Scorsese creating some marvellous set pieces where the past intervenes with the present and Leonardo creates a compelling picture of brooding disarray. The film however does get bogged down a bit by its gloomy overtones and its meandering flashbacks which tend to distract. But the sledgehammer climax more than makes up for these minor flaws.