FILM REVIEW: Shutter Island

Submitted by Seth Rogovoy on February 20, 2010 - 12:11pm

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Shutter Island
Directed by Martin Scorsese
Story by Dennis Lehane
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley

Review by Seth Rogovoy

Every frame of this film veritably pulses with physical and psychological suspense as Martin Scorsese uses his formidable tools to deliver his take on a Cold War-era thriller involving Nazis, the FBI, an insane asylum on an isolated island, medical experiments, paranoia, sociopathic behavior, a storm of Biblical proportions, which altogether play like Alfred Hitchock on steroids. Leonardo DiCaprio is solid as the chief federal investigator whose own sanity comes under question (and is, ultimately, the dramatic focal point of the movie), and Ben Kingsley and the great Max von Sydow are perfectly cast as the psychiatrists running the institution.

Cameos by Patricia Clarkson and Jackie Earle Haley lend a mythic quality to the plot, and Robbie Robertson’s musical direction is one with Scorsese’s amped-up visuals.

In the end, though, this is no Departed or Gangs of New York or Kundun - it’s minor Scorsese, having formal fun at the expense of the story and performances. One suspects there was even an attempt here to score points on contemporary politics and policy, but that never gets fully developed.

Playing at the Triplex.

Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living’s award-winning editor-in-chief and cultural critic.

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