Careful Leo, you’ll singe your awkward teenage mustache!
I just went through a perfectly competent yet logically flawed action/thriller in Green Zone, so what better way to follow it up than another perfectly competent yet (extremely) logically flawed thriller?
Thinking…
Thinking…
I can’t think of one, so let’s go!
Shutter Island opens with two cops aboard a ferry destined to arrived at the titular destination, they are Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck, although we know them better as Leonardo Di Caprio and Mark Ruffalo.
It is 1954. Shutter Island is an isolated land mass, with the only notable feature being a large mental hospital to house the criminally insane. Once ashore Teddy and Chuck are given the rundown, no guns, nothing done without prior approval, and no going to Ward C, the local police are all heavily armed and seem very touchy, which is probably understandable when you are surrounded by homicidal lunatics each workday.
They are told that Dr Cowley runs the show, and everything that they do must first be approved by him, we learn that Dr Cowley has embraced some extremely way out techniques in an effort to cure patients without resorting to measures that society deems inhumane. (You know, the old slicing out a chunk of brain thing!)
Teddy and Chuck are on the island investigating the escape/disappearance of a woman who killed all three of her children in cold blood, only she thinks they are still alive, her name is Rachel Solando.
In the early proceedings it seems that no-one is willing to be very forthcoming or provide much assistance to aid the investigation, and after an impromptu unflattering analysis from another psychiatrist, played by Max Von Sydow, Teddy decides that enough is enough and that he wants to call off the search.
It is around this time that tensions begin to run high, and Teddy starts having flashbacks to his own deceased wife, played in flashback by Michelle Williams. Teddy tells Chuck that a man named Andrew Latis is responsible for her premature death in a fire that he lit.
Teddy is also a war veteran and has very disturbing dreams and recollections about his time spent in battle. Aaaahh, the 50’s, just good to be alive!
Teddy’s plan to leave is thwarted by a huge storm that sweeps across the island, with departure impossible Teddy and Chuck commence interviews with other patients who knew Rachel Solando, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that most of the people interviewed turn out to be varying degrees of nutso. It seems everyone knows more than they admit, but no-one is willing to help Teddy join the dots.
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Amid the confusion Teddy seems to fall under the Island’s spell, having dream after dream, after vision, after dream, after nightmare, after… it all actually got quite yawnworthy, every time something happened that built tension or seemed freaky, I immediately knew that it was a dream or vision and he would be jolted awake in a second. It must have happened half a dozen times at least.
Fast forward a little, Teddy tells Chuck that he actually asked to be on the Solando case as Andrew Latis, the murderer of his wife was imprisoned there. Ted also thinks that the hospital is covering up the fact that it performs extremely illegal experiments on its patients, Chuck proposes that maybe the whole thing is an elaborate set-up to get Teddy to the island.
Why? The rest of the film attempts to explain that. Unfortunately once I knew the “why”, I moved on to another couple of questions; “who cares?” and “as if!”. Not a question I know but I did say it.
There are meetings with almost every person references, including Rachel Solando and Andrew Latis, a power failure and a chance encounter with Rachel Solando. No that wasn’t a mistake or a typo, there are two different Solando meetings… or are there?
Yes, there are.
All roads ultimately lead to a mysterious lighthouse on the island, which is where the climactic showdown occurs.
The problem with Shutter Island is that we know we are not going to get many laughs or big action scenes going in. It is a “question mark” sort of film, as in Who? What? Where? Why? How? Because it poses these questions we the audience start predicting and hypothesizing from the first few minutes.
By the time I finally got the end and was told all the answers I had gone through dozens of potential outcomes and reasons, including the actual outcome that they went with. Only the chosen finale would have demanded so many coincidences and leaps of logic that it lost much of its credibility along the way and I became uninvolved with the story.
Everything else was fine though, which is why the 7 I am about to give the film must be prefixed as a “disappointing” 7. Shutter Island is well made and well acted, and for the first half of the film quite absorbing, but by overreaching with the hammy climax it ruined a solid build up for me.
So from the half way mark on I was always very aware that I was watching a film, not involving myself in a story. That sounds dumb I know, but the best movies don’t remind you that they are movies until the credits roll.
Final Rating – 7 / 10. To say it was underwhelming pretty much sums it up accurately I think.
