Shutter Island (2010)

It’s 1954, and a dame’s gone missing…a criminally insane dame. That’s the basic premise of Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s part film noir, part psychological thriller, and fourth pairing with Leonardo DiCaprio. If you have a soft spot for any of the above-named people or things, as I do, this film is for you.

It opens with Edward “Teddy” Daniels, a U.S. Marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) aboard a ferry in the foggy waters off the coast of Boston. They’re headed to the titular island, one that looks like Alacatraz, only more forbidding. The island’s rocky outcrops and sheer cliffs protect the rest of society from Ashecliffe Hospital’s inhabitants: 66 dangerous mental patients who have all killed before. Or is it 67?

We’ll save that question for later. For now, Teddy is there to investigate the seemingly impossible disappearance of patient #66, Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), housed in the institution for drowning her three children. From the moment he arrives, however, it’s clear that the folks in charge on the island are not giving Teddy their complete cooperation. The deputy warden confiscates his gun, while Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the psychiatrist in charge, obfuscates the truth. And then there’s the German doctor (Max von Sydow).

What Teddy does get to keep are his molasses-thick Boston patois, trench coat and fedora, and a 1950s-style short tie in just about the ugliest print I’ve ever seen. It was a gift from Teddy’s late wife, Dolores (Michelle Williams), whose violent death still haunts his dreams and whose murderer, Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas), may also be somewhere on the island.

Laeddis, the German doctor (of whom WWII vet Teddy is immediately suspicious), and the question of patient 67 are among the many bread crumbs–and more than a few red herrings–Teddy follows to the truth of Shutter Island. Are Dr. Cawley and the German performing sinister experiments on the mentally ill? Are they driving people crazy to turn them into Manchurian Candidate-esque ticking time bombs? Is Teddy here by accident or is he being lured and trapped for knowing too much? Will his already frayed mental edges come apart at the seams? The more he learns, the less he’s sure about.

And the less he is sure of, the more we’re reminded what a gifted actor DiCaprio really is. All right, so he cheats by borrowing the dropped “r”s and blinky facial ticks he honed on his last two collaborations with Scorsese (The Departed and The Aviator, respectively), but they still work. Meanwhile, Kingsley is spot-on as the psychiatrist whose warm, kind exterior conceals dubious motives and methods. Even the usually rumpled Ruffalo works as Teddy’s (mostly) loyal sidekick, and looks downright dapper in a suit and hat.

Adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel of the same name, Shutter Island is a densely plotted film–albeit not nearly as suspenseful as it thinks it is–that could have easily turned into a big, sloppy mess. But in the hands of the Oscar-winning Scorsese, it becomes a picture more about the mood than about the niggling details, of which there are almost too many. Forget them all.

Instead, allow yourself to be rattled by the violent New England hurricane, with its blue-grey skies and inky storm clouds, that sets in as soon as the film begins. Savor the curly tendrils of cigarette smoke that fill every room in a nod to noir classics. Get a little dizzy from all the swish panning from one Edvard Munch-looking twisted face to another. And marvel at the hideousness of that tie. It’s as repulsive as Dolores’ vivid yellow house-frock is appealing.

After all, mood setting is this director’s special gift. Then again, this dame’s soft spot may be showing.