February 20th, 2010
Good but not great. I’ve been wanting to see this movie for a long time due to the hype of course behind the Scorsese directed picture. It seems they had been running previews for this thing for a year and because DiCaprio came off a stellar performance in The Departed, I was looking forward to it. The previews were a little misleading. They almost made it seem like it was a horror, where Shutter Island was a haunted place and something like the house in The Shining. In terms of the actual movie, Leonardo definitely delivers as the great actor he is and you can’t take that away from him. Without a doubt he makes this movie worth seeing. I also liked how this movie was shot and developed like a novel keeping true to Dennis Lehane’s best seller, where themes were actually prevalent, keeping things tight and nicely connected. However, when it comes to everything else, I felt like I saw it a few times already; between the island, prisoners/patients, mental institution, corrupt cops and doctors. All of which make for an extremely predictable and traditional recipe for a “creepy” movie. Without giving it away I will say, there is ONE movie in particular from within the past 10 years, which Shutter Island lends itself to so much that as soon as the plot was revealed, I immediately thought “wow this is the 2010….” This type of realization coupled with what actually happens was mildly annoying. On the other hand, if you do not predict what will happen before it actually does, you will enjoy it a lot more. 3/5
Completely agree. Any movie buff will have predicted the ending and probably on the first thought of what the twist could be which is the most disappointing. Hollywood recycles too much stuff. From a legend like Scorsese this is especially disappointing. What is the movie you are thinking of?