Sunday, April 18, 2010

Shutter Island: Review

Sigh. And some people say we can't make em like we use to anymore.
Shutter Island is about US Marshall Teddy Daniels played by Leonardo DiCaprio who comes with his partner Chuck to Shutter Island, an island with a mental institute for the criminally insane to investigate the disappearance of a female patient. But as the story progresses, we find out that Teddy has ulterior motives for being on Shutter Island.
Shutter Island is such a visually driven film, we get a lot of weird creepy flashbacks or dream sequences in the movie that at first will not make any sense to you but will still creep the hell out of you. Watching Shutter Island kind of gave me the feeling like I was watching The Shining again where everything is so ambiguous for the audiences interpretation to the point where it begins to scare you.
I totally enjoyed the ride I went on with this film. Let me just say without giving out any spoilers that you will go through psychological hell in this. No other film in a long time has given me this much sense of paranoia other than Shutter Island and when the full story unfolds for you, you begin to realize how brilliant everything else was leading up to the ending and how everything had a brilliant double meaning.
And speaking of psychological hell, I have to go back and rewatch this movie again because there were certain scenes in this film I found rather.... strange. I don't know whether it was me or it was just that bastard Scorsese deliberately fucking around with me but there were some points in the movie where there was something strange going on but it happens so fast, some people wouldn't even notice it.
 For example, there's one scene where a mental patient asks for a glass of water and then drinks nothing but air and in the next frame there's a glass of water in her hand. Or like a few shots where a whole scene was reversed. All these I think was done to intentionally make you feel a little crazy.
I think Leonardo DiCaprio is having sex with Martin Scorsese or something just like how Johnny Depp is having sex with Tim Burton cause that dude is in every Scorsese film I see now. But I really can't complain because DiCaprio is amazing in this just like how he's amazing in every other film he's in. But  gotta say that the best performance in the film was Mark Ruffulo who was seriously overshadowed by Leonardo DiCaprio here.
My complaint about this movie is that it is long. It's 2 hours and 30 minutes here, which is okay for some movies but there's only so much psychological twists you can take from a movie. I think that Scorsese could have been a bit tighter on his edits, trim the film down just a little bit especially those scenes where DiCaprio is running aimlessly around Shutter Island. It just draws out every scene way too long than needed to the point where it almost got annoying. I was going, "Okay... okay.... I got what I needed to know from this scene... so like why are you still talking around? Get on to the next scene!"
Also I have a slight problem with the ending, not because it wasn't a great ending but I found it a little to far-fetched. That's all I'm going to say cause I can't spoil too much for ya'll.  just think that no insane asylum would ever do something like that to (SHUT THE FUCK UP NICHOLAS YOU SPOILING THE MOVIE!!)

RATING: 8/10

3 comments:

  1. definitely a good one, hats off to scorcese and dicaprio!!!

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  2. Awesome.movie
    LeoNardo is.awesomeat.picking
    which.shows.to.star.in

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