Review: Shutter Island (2010)

The third of our Dennis Lehane based movie reviews!

Seeing "Shutter Island" on opening night, in Boston, inevitably meant running into crew members and/or extras who participated in its filming. The production was massive -- hundreds of crew members, hundreds of starved (and sometimes naked) extras. They took over the now defunct Medfield State Hospital for 80+ shooting days, built a graveyard, created a hurricane, etc. Epic productions lead to epic films... let's dive in!

"Shutter Island" has a very Hitchcockian vibe to it. It's cloudy, both literally and psychologically. Though it has some of violence, the anticipation of violence does more to drive the plot. We wait, and wait for things to jump out at us... we wait for the car to explode. The tension builds.

For those of us who had read the script, "Shutter Island" seemed overstuffed with plot explanations. For those of us who hadn't, this movie left us with a barrage of questions... what the hell just happened? Perhaps there is a happy medium after a second viewing.

DiCaprio's great as our hallucinating tour guide through "Shutter Island". We were even more impressed with the dry-witted doctor played by Sir Ben Kingsley. Other acting highlights include:

1) KC Jones from the Ninja Turtles movies... with his face torn to shreds.

2) The pedophile from "Little Children"/Rorschach from "Watchmen"... with his face torn to shreds.

3) Ted "Put the Lotion in the Basket" Levine from "The Silence of the Lambs"... playing the hilariously creepy prison guard. At one point he starts threatening to bite DiCaprio in the eyeball! The whole audience laughed out of discomfort.

This film shares a few things with the other Lehane films: it's a mystery to be solved by a law officer, there are dead children in the water, and it dwells in morally gray areas. "Shutter Island", however, lands far outside any conventions. We would say more, but then we would have to kill you.

Final Score = A-