It’s been a busy month, so I managed to avoid hearing or seeing any details about Martin Scorsese’s new film other than the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio is the star, which was enough to pique my interest. My respect for DiCaprio as a serious thespian sparked with The Beach (if not for Travis Ammons – my second director – insisting that I must, I might not have ever watched it) and has risen with each role thereafter. Scorsese has been a genius to me forever; I saw Taxi Driver and Mean Streets during my impressionable youth. So when Fembot asked me if I would go to Shutter Island with some other fellow film fans I didn’t miss a beat and raced to the Alamo to buy tickets 3 hours in advance.

Although I am clearly a Scorsese/DiCaprio fan, this movie left me with mixed feelings on many levels. Chalk it up to being a film connoisseur that I saw most of the plot points projected well before the mystery unfolded fully, which kept me from being surprised as I should have been throughout the film. The story centers on DiCaprio trying to solve a mystery while being obviously misled by the inhabitants of the island asylum, with repetitive references to new experimental treatments being carried out on the criminal minds held there, which tend to give away much of the story before the proper reveal. As a result, everything a capable mind will deduce along the way comes to fruition as expected, down to some canned responses. Because of the talent involved I spent most of the film transfixed on the beautiful camera direction and dedicated actors waiting in vain for the left turn that would justify my anticipation.

The camera work throughout is captivating and guides the viewer along in proper thriller style. The practical sets and in-camera effects are what you expect from the director. The setting is great, the history revealed is intriguing, DiCaprio and all the scattered patients and staff interacting with him are brilliant. The subtext from supporting actors Ben Kingsley and Max Von Sydow is delivered with the caliber you expect from great performers. Yet somehow the multiple sub-plots exposed seem much more compelling than the main tale. The original presented mystery is far more interesting than the conclusion delivered. Don’t blame the director or actors for this – the story is just made to appeal to the mass majority of casual film goers who will “ooh” and “aah” at the spoon-fed mystery and overly-foreshadowed “twist”, which proves the studio used all the talent involved to produce a marketable product while cutting corners on post-production work that was ultimately unnecessary (Scorsese has done amazing work for decades with just a camera, great talent and natural settings), which may alienate the higher-standard fans – sign of the times, status quo, etc..

From my perspective, after years of building their reputations by carefully choosing what, who and where they film, many of the great directors of our time have been stunted by doing their best to creatively interpret mundane stories that are handed to them by the big studios who attach flashy names in order to grab the attention of the widest audience. Although there are great actors doing their jobs well in Shutter Island, some seemed out of place for the sake of mass appeal, such as Michelle Williams (of Dawson’s Creek) and Mark Ruffalo (forgettable, but that may be the point of his character). Add to this the distraction of unpolished compositing – the entire opening, which attempts to convey a ferry boat at sea transporting DiCaprio and Ruffalo to the titular island, is disturbingly obvious as a poorly edited green-screen studio shoot due to the unmatched lighting and opposing wind direction between the water and flapping coats and ties of the actors. I thought it may have been a dream sequence at first so I tried to ignore it, luckily it doesn’t last too long. Even the CG effects look more like video game cut-scenes than fluid dream sequences in a Scorsese film. These moments may not even register to most people who are not trained in the details of making movies but diminishes suspension of disbelief for any film student. It’s hard to tell who is to blame as there are three significant visual effects teams credited on this film.. perhaps another story of too many cooks in the kitchen.

Shutter Island will inevitably win well deserved awards for acting and direction for what was achieved with a generic psychological thriller but to me it’s another example of misusing dedicated talent for financial gain. It also tells me that Scorsese needs some better scripts to choose from.