Shutter Island [Blu-ray]

Product Description

Academy Award® winning director Martin Scorsese once again teams up with Leonardo DiCaprio in this spine-chilling thriller that critics say “sizzles with so much suspense that it’s hot to the touch.”** When U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) arrives at the asylum for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, what starts as a routine investigation quickly takes a sinister turn. As the investigation unfolds and Teddy uncovers more shocking and terrifying truths about the island, he learns there are some places that never let you go. **Peter Travers, Rolling Stone.

Amazon.com

Martin Scorsese puts Leonardo DiCaprio through the wringer again in Shutter Island, a gothic adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel. Leo’s character, a Federal Marshal named Teddy Daniels, is first seen vomiting and jittery aboard a ferry; he and his new partner (Mark Ruffalo) are being taken across the water to investigate an escape from a prison for the criminally insane, located on a forbidding rock called Shutter Island. From the first, Scorsese treats the place as though it were Skull Island in King Kong, worthy of ominous music cues and portentous camera angles. This might not be an easy assignment for the sweaty, anxious Daniels, who is haunted by his memories of German concentration camps and the loss of his wife (Michelle Williams, appearing in ghostly hallucinations). The audience will likely feel just as unnerved as Daniels, given the destabilizing nature of Robert Richardson’s swooping cinematography and Thelma Schoonmaker’s crazy-making editing scheme (it feels as though fractions of seconds have been removed from the timing of simple conversations, giving the movie a strung-out edginess–it’s like watching Ray Liotta’s cocaine meltdown sequence from GoodFellas for 138 minutes). Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow are staff psychiatrists, suspiciously eager to talk about lobotomies, and Ted Levine and Patricia Clarkson appear for small but potent turns. Scorsese appears to be “doing a genre picture” here, borrowing happily from influences such as Val Lewton and Samuel Fuller, and the film has a resultingly put-on atmosphere: a great deal of old-dark-house Sturm und Drang whipped up in service of a gimmicky little premise. The fade-out achieves some measure of real eeriness, and the whole shebang is certainly a kicky night out at the movies–if you can shake the sense that a talented filmmaker is working a couple of rungs beneath his level. –Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

“An absolutely spectacular modern noir film.” 2010-06-07
By DanD
Sometimes, schlock borders on art. In the hands of Martin Scorsese, it not only becomes art–it becomes a whole new kind of art entirely. SHUTTER ISLAND is equal parts thriller, noir, mystery, and horror, a darkly humorous and atmospheric film filled some outstanding acting and truly stunning visuals.

The film revolves around a very simple premise: U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his partner (Ruffalo) are going to Ashecliffe Island on Shutter Island, outside Boston, to look for a missing inmate. She hasn’t escaped: she’s on the island somewhere. But where? And what exactly goes on at Ashecliffe, what mysterious activities have really drawn Daniels there? And the ultimate question: will he escape with his sanity?

The film is very closely based on Dennis Lehane’s spectacular novel, with a few minor twists (and one not-so-minor twist near the end). DiCaprio is a wonder in the lead role; he has really grown into his own as an actor, and this film gives him a breadth of range he hasn’t yet seen before. As for the rest of the principle cast: Ruffalo is in traditionally fine form; it’s nice to see Ben Kingsly actually acting again (as opposed to just treading water in a bunch of slop); Michelle Williams is amazing as Daniels’s deceased wife (viewed in flashbacks/hallucinations); Max von Sydow is chilling (if underused); Emily Mortimer turns in a haunting performance in her limited role; John Carroll Lynch doesn’t have much to do, but does it well; and Jackie Earl Healey, in his small role, is fantastic.

The level of the performances, and the solid script by Laeta Kalogridis, aside, the reason to view this film–repeatedly–is for Scorsese’s atmospheric directing. Remember CAPE FEAR, his slight misfire of a horror film (though still far better than most horror films of the 90s)? SHUTTER ISLAND doesn’t misfire, not once. And it’s filled with some absolutely stellar visual shots, scenes and imagery that borders on performance art. Haunting in its breadth and emotional resonance, SHUTTER ISLAND ranks among Scorsese’s best. Watch it to see what a noir/horror film should be.

“Bedlam near Boston: Psychodrama and Suspense on a Grand Scale” 2010-06-07
By M. Jay Sullivan (Cambridge, Ma)
This eerie neo-noir, mystery, madness movie reminds me a bit of Scorsese’s other foray into madness, “Taxi Driver.” but the hallucinatory nature of Shutter Island is cinematically more interesting to me, although the DeNiro character may be slightly more powerful than DiCaprio.

Having worked for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health as a psychologist in the 1970’s, the authenticity of the settings is amazing (not surprising in that some of it was filmed at Medfield State Hospital where I worked). The brick exteriors and the institutional green interiors brought back some unsettling memories. Although this transpired in a more gloomy period of psychiatric history in the early 50’s, where lobotomies were still in fashion and the applications of ECT (aka shock therapy) was almost equally as gruesome.

The delusional world of Teddy Daniels was quite convincing, and extremely well done. The concentration camp sequences, the visions of his wife, the psychiatrist in the cave- psychiatry was very primitive then gave an excellent representation of full blown paranoid schizophrenic. And DiCaprio pulled off this arduous scenario very well. Ben Kingsley was also well cast as the psychiatrist/superintendent, with his aristocratic airs and the pictures of the more grizzly bygone days of psychiatric torture adorning (e. g.screws in the head to let the demons out) his sumptuous abode. Seeing one of the finest actors of all time, Max Van Sydow, of Ingmar Bergman film’s fame,as Kingsley’s colleague was a real treat.

However, the idea that DiCaprio’s law enforcement ordeals where part a vast psychotic psychodrama, initiated by Kingsley, seemed a bit nutty, and pushed the idea that cinema to be effective to the audience requires a “suspension of disbelief” to the limit. Nevertheless the mystery and suspense was excellent, and Scorsese came of looking like Bergman, orchestrating masterful shifts between fantasy and reality. Sure Martin overdid it a bit, on one hand, by having Shutter Island resemble a semi-gothic Alcatraz,and, on the other, having Shutter Island seem not nearly as scary on the inside as Bridgewater State hospital, the Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane, memorialized in Joseph Wiseman’s classic, and gruesome, documentary, “Titticut Follies.” To reach that level would have required a character like Anthony Hopkins’ chilling characterization as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, the gold standard of the criminally insane leading man. The criminally insane patients who, for the most part, seemed remarkably subdued, a symptom of the then new, chemical straight jacket, Thorazine.

Anyway I think the official Amazon reviewer who saw this as one of Scorsese’s lesser works is crazy, or at least needs to get his head examined. I think this ranks up with “Taxi Driver” as one of Martin’s finest movies. Also, I thought its portrayal of the Bostonian mindset was way better than in The Departed,” in which DiCaprio was excellent but, as usual- like in last year’s “Revolution Road,” not fully appreciated. He won an Oscar as a young, developmentally challenged character, in the second rate “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” However, he will surely be passed over here because a “madman, who’s frightening behavior,won’t appeal to the pseudo liberal, PC, tastes (“Hurt Locker,”" Milk”) of the Academy Award’s self congratulatory, aesthetically challenged, voters. Maybe my somewhat scattered review is a bit delusional as well, like one the guard’s said: “madness” is contagious in the madnouses, and I certainly did my time as a member of a front line treatment team in my own Shutter Island.

“Very well done!” 2010-06-06
By Bob (California)
This is a very original psychological thriller that keeps you guessing till the end – I was shocked. Extremely well done with superb acting. Can be a little disturbing because of how real it seems, but man is it a good ride. I can’t wait to get this blu-ray and watch it again!

“2009 Scorsese film on DVD.” 2010-06-06
By Dr. Feelgood (USA)
This film is quite different from other Scorsese films, so it is worth checking out. Although, it’s subject matter is kind of dark, and depressing. The fact that it is clearly, just a movie, though, makes it work.

“An Excellent Adaptation of the Book” 2010-06-06
By K. Thalheimer (Long Island, NY)
I loved the book & looked forward to the movie. The movie does not disappoint.
The movie adapts itself so very well from the book. The story is very closely followed. The acting is superb by all involved. The direction is superb as well.
As a period piece set in the early 1950’s, the time frame of that era is excellent.

Pay attention & follow closely or this story will lose you. It messes with your head, as it should, being set in a psychiatric hospital of that era. The end in which you find the truth of Mr. DiCaprio’s character is much more satisfying than the book. The book does not spell the ending out as clearly as the movie.

This is a “No Miss” movie

All Reviews