Film File - Shutter Island

Set in 1954, at the height of the Cold War, this psychological thriller begins when US Marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) are summoned to the offshore Shutter Island to investigate the bizarre disappearance of a multiple murderess from a locked room within the impenetrable Ashecliffe Hospital. Surrounded by probing psychiatrists and dangerously psychopathic patients on the remote, windswept isle, the pair of investigators find themselves in an eerie and unsettling place that suggests nothing is quite what it seems. With a hurricane bearing down on the island, the investigation needs to move rapidly, even as the suspicions and mysteries multiply. There are hints and rumours of evil conspiracies, sordid medical experiments, repressive mind control, secret wards, and even at times a hint of the supernatural, but elusive proof. As the masters in charge, Dr Nahring (Max von Sydow) and Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley) bring sinister undertones as they appear to thwart the investigation at every turn. Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson play different aspects of an inmate, Rachel, whose story intertwines the plot. Moving in the shadows of an institution haunted by the terrible deeds of its inhabitants and the unknown agendas of its doctors, Daniels begins to sense that the deeper he pursues the investigation the more he will be forced to confront some of his own profound fears from his days as a soldier in the liberation of the Nazi death camps. In his follow-up to his bestselling 'Mystic River', which would be adapted into an Oscar-winning film, author Denis Lehane fashioned an intensely atmospheric, terror-filled psychological shocker set at the height of 1950s Cold War paranoia which merged elements of Gothic mystery, pulp fiction and conspiracy thriller to create an unsettling book. For inspiration, director Martin Scorcese looked to film classics of the genre like Jacques Tourneur's 1947 dark tale of double-crosses, 'Out of the Past', Edward Dmytryk's 1947 thriller, 'Crossfire', about the murder of a Jewish soldier after WWII, and Orson Welles' 1963 film 'The Trial', an adaptation of Franz Kafka's surreal tale of a man inexplicably detained for an unknown crime. Scorcese, an acclaimed filmmaker who rarely puts a foot wrong, does go over the top on this one - piling on overdone art direction against a bombastic soundtrack that jars to the point of annoyance at times. DiCaprio, who works with Scorcese for the third time here, takes second place to his alter ego in a series of flashbacks and nightmares that render the audience more confused than it should be - a problem deriving from a poor adaptation of Lehane's book by screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis, whose previous credits include the woeful 'Alexander' - enough said. 'Shutter Island' certainly has enough edge-of-seat moments to make it worth the price of admission - but is ultimately one of Scorcese's lesser films. He may have tried for a recreation of Alfred Hitchcock, but on this occasion, he fails.