Not that his sanity won’t be tested, as a hurricane sets its path directly toward Shutter Island and indirectly triggers a roiling tempest inside Teddy’s soul.Know this: Lehane's new novel, his first since the highly praised and bestselling Mystic River, carries an ending so shocking yet so faithful to what has come before, that it will go down as one of the most aesthetically right resolutions ever written.

Add to that the horrific death of his wife (a radiant Michelle Williams spied in flashbacks) and it becomes a wonder he’s not a patient himself.

And the more you know about those mini-masterpieces like “Cat People,” “Laura” and “Crossfire,” the more you’re likely to dig what Scorsese is doing.Īnd what you’ll dig most is the level of performance he summons from DiCaprio, who has never been better at playing the brooding, emotionally scarred hero.Īs a veteran of World War II and one of the liberators of the Dachau death camp, DiCaprio’s Teddy is toting some mighty heavy baggage rooted in what he saw and did during wartime. He pulls out all the stops, too, paying homage to just about all of his favorite pulpy B movies from the 1950s. It also feels like a cheap copout in much the same way Lehane’s “Gone Baby Gone” did when it unveiled its underlying secret.įault for that, however, falls more on the screenwriter than Scorsese, who once again proves what a master director can accomplish even if saddled with an inferior script.

It comes back to bite him in the end, when “the big reveal” stirs feelings of indifference more than genuine shock.

Instead of creating thrills and suspense, as intended, these tricks start leading you to believe that they are just that, tricks, all carefully assembled to mask a story that doesn’t begin to hold up to scrutiny. And it’s interesting up to a point, especially the way Scorsese and cinematographer Robert Richardson (“The Departed”) bathe the entire production in an intoxicating dream-like haze.Īs the story slogs along well past the two-hour mark, however, you begin to lose patience with all the mind trips Scorsese insists on playing. More to the point, is she even real? The fact that Rachel is played by both Emily Mortimer and Patricia Clarkson, suggests she’s either a figment of someone’s imagination or an escapee from a Charlie Kaufman movie.īut then, that gray area between reality and delusion is precisely the point of both Lehane’s novel and Scorsese’s less satisfying movie.

Shutter island de dennis lehane