The investigation spans days, and DiCaprio suffers from nightmares starring his late wife Michelle Williams. A hurricane hits the facility, further hampering the investigation. DiCaprio exhibits an obsession with someone named Andrew Laeddis, whom he believes murdered Williams. DiCaprio suspects that the staff are up to something nefarious, and may soon drug or restrain him to stop his efforts to uncover the truth.
How others will see it. Shutter Island is the fourth of five (so far) feature films directed by Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. This partnership has proved mutually beneficial, since their films typically are box office successes and celebrated at film festivals.
Shutter Island continued the commercial winning streak, with a worldwide gross of nearly 300M on a lofty 80M budget. Surprisingly, though, it was passed over without nominations by the Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTA. It did manage to pick up five nominations at the Saturn Awards, including Best Horror Film, Best Director, Best Actor (DiCaprio), and, curiously, Best Supporting Actor (Ruffalo).
But today at imdb.com, there is little doubt about the film's significance. It has a spectacular 943K user votes and an extremely high user rating of 8.1 out of 10. As usual, the grades drop with advancing age of the viewers, from 8.8 among females under 18, to 7.5 among men over 45.
User reviews indicate that most folks find the film enthralling, and are pleased with the inevitable plot twists. The typical comment is "another Martin-Leo masterpiece!"
How I felt about it. Scorsese is undoubtedly the most highly regarded living U.S. movie director, with recent success placing him ahead of Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and the Coen brothers. The latter are more consistent (Gangs of New York, for example, is a mess) but their careers do not stretch back as far as Scorsese, who established himself 45 years ago in Mean Streets.
Scorsese's gold mine is DiCaprio, whose film selection is imperfect (remember The Beach?) but whose acting has been stellar since This Boy's Life. In Shutter Island, he is an object of sympathy throughout, however misguided his attempts to explain away what has happened to him.
Nonetheless, Shutter Island has problems. We are supposed to believe that Kingsley effectively stages an improvisational play, involving numerous people, all to convince DiCaprio that he shot his children-murdering wife? Is this how patients are cured in mental hospitals, whether in 1890, 1950, or 2010?
But while the show is bogus, the farce can be forgiven because it is so well done. The dream sequences are a trip, Ruffalo's jaded performance is a hoot, and DiCaprio is as intense as ever, and perhaps even more confused than he was in The Basketball Diaries.