Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island
I just rented Shutter Island with Leonardo Dicaprio and I must say it’s a great thinking man’s movie. The first time through, for the first 2/3rd’s of the movie, you’re pulled along by the mystery that Dicaprio is investigating. It’s an engaging mystery because somethings just don’t make sense. At all.
Along with DiCaprio, Shutter Island cast includes Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Jackie Earle Haley and one of my favorite and what I think is an underrated actor, Elias Koteas.
But then suddenly, the last third starts to pull everything together so that events at the front of the movie suddenly make sense. In an eerie way that you just don’t believe right away. In fact for the first part of that last 1/3 of the movie, I kept doubting that this was what was actually happening. Once I believed it, I reflected back on my experience with a better perspective than I had been carrying throughout.
And that’s the trick… Shutter Island is an experience rather than a movie. For me to fully explain this, I have to throw out plot-line spoilers.
If you don’t want to have surprises or twists blown, I’d recommend not moving forward in this article and come back after you’ve seen it. With that said,
SPOILERS from here on out
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When Shutter Island starts, we’re following Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) arriving at a prison island for mental patients.
As he follows the clues to a disappearance, some things don’t add up and the investigation seems to start unravel.
Yet at some point past half way, we discover that Teddy isn’t a cop, but a mental patient himself who is participating in a revolutionary kind of therapy operated by Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley).
At first, I thought they were pulling our legs that Daniels was really a patient. I thought it was a “trick” on the character and the movie fan.
But as the story rolls along toward the end, you realize it’s not a trick. Interesting indeed.
Shutter Island is interesting. It’s a thinking man’s movie that is peppered with incidental action scenes to keep some energy bound up in the story.
