2.21.2010

Shutter Island (2010)

Martin Scorcese has made another remarkable film with his muse Leonardo DiCaprio as the follow-up to his Oscar winning film The Departed.


Widower and U.S. Marshall, Teddy begins an assignment to find a missing violent psychiatric patient who has escaped from her ward on Shutter Island. He, with his partner, quickly find that something is not quite right on the island and the investigation spreads to other aspects of the mental institution. They find that the possibility of leaving may be diminishing by the hour - and finding this patient might be more difficult than they had first imagined.

First, the film is stylistically a classic thriller using many of the elements that Alfred Hitchcock used - clues and foreshadowing abound in the first 10 minutes. The fact that it is set in 1954 and that it feels like a 1954 movie is awesome. Second, the writing is gripping and when the end occurs, you end up retracing your footsteps to the beginning and recalling all of the events. Third, the actors perform amazingly, stirring emotions of sadness and fear to extreme levels.

Brilliant!

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