Hijinks Movie Reviews: Shutter Island

Welcome to our first movie review! (Well, technically the 2nd movie we’ve reviewed I guess, but the first from our ‘new look’ Hijinks Inc. And even then, that movie was reviewed twice as you’ll find here and here… and I’ll be wrapping up this rabbit trail right about…. now)

Shutter Island is based on a book by the same name and was released in theaters February 19, 2010 and on Blu-ray and DVD June 8, 2010. A quick lookup on Wikipedia will give you this blurb:

Shutter Island is a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese. The film is based on Dennis Lehane‘s 2003 novel of the same name. Production started in March 2008. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as U.S. Marshal Edward “Teddy” Daniels, who is investigating the psychiatric facility on Shutter Island.

I’ve always had tepid anticipation for pretty much every Leonardo DiCaprio movie because I still kind of hold it against him that a crappy movie like Titanic (the boat sinks people! We all knew that going in and it STILL held the box office record!) sat atop the box office mostly due to little girls repetitively attending and fawning over Leo. However, he’s been in some really good movies lately, The Departed being my favorite, so maybe I need to re-evaluate my opinion of him. The fact that this was another Martin Scorsese film also grabbed my attention, but still, it looked like it was just trying to be the next creepy horror-ish type movie, probably with a twist at the end that nobody was supposed to see coming. I guess, to an extent, this holds true, but it’s done very well. More after the jump, including possible spoilers.

Leo does a really good job in this film portraying the US Marshal investigating the disappearance of a patient from this psychiatric hospital/prison. As the plot unravels, you find yourself trying to figure out if his character Teddy is being mislead by these people trying to cover something up, or if he might actually be losing it. Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo also do a good job of adding just enough layers to their characters that you just can’t quite figure out if their being honest or taking part in the cover up.

Having not read the book, I can’t completely compare the two, or speak about whether the author intended for the character Teddy to be sane or insane from the beginning of the book. Apparently the book is written in such a way that it really leaves alot more up to you to figure out for yourself. It’s definitely a movie you need to pay attention to as you watch, searching for every clue they leave you along the way. My wife and I were both multi-tasking as the movie played in the background, I followed the movie fairly well, she missed quite a bit of it as she was taking care of the baby, so it was a very different experience for us both.

All said, I definitely recommend it.

Dave’s Quick Hits: The acting was good, gripping story, good ending, 7 out of 10

The Wife’s Thoughts: Since I hardly watched it, it seemed dreadfully long and on top of that, no eye candy, 3 out of 10