Shutter Island

Visually beautiful, wonderfully acted, and relentlessly gripping, Shutter Island is a brilliantly unrestrained psychological thriller that keeps its audience riveted throughout its entire duration.

I just saw Shutter Island this evening, just prior to its American release. I have to say this film was full of intrigue. Prior to viewing this film I had built a preconceived notion of what this thriller was going to be like because I was fooled yet again by good marketing when watching the trailer. This is probably not the movie for your average film-goer who wants an easy plot line to follow and little thought required. This movie does challenge the viewer physchologically and definitely holds your attention all the way through. For someone who was never much of a Leonardo fan, his performance is brilliant, so much range to his character. In fact all of the acting in this film is excellent. The directing is probably the best quality to this film. I always enjoy watching a film that is as unpredicatable as this film and where the director has turned the plot line on to his viewer.

I saw this and I knew what to expect going in to the film as I had already read about half of the book but never got the chance to finish it. But I was surprised at how faithful the film was to the original material.The directing was also masterfully done and pretty cool I saw some cool camera tricks I hadn't seen since Martin Scorsese directed Bringing Out The Dead, Martin Scorsese did one great job and everyone was top notch especially Ben Kingsley and DiCaprio and I never though I would jump out of fright especially in a Scorsese film but I did. All in all a solid thriller with a good story and some great performances and for me it's the best film I've seen in 2010 so far.

It is one of the best movies made by director Martin Scorsese. It is perhaps the best movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Honestly speaking, it is one of the greatest films of the decade. DiCaprio featured in two movies in 2010, the other one being "Inception". Both were excellent. To this day, they are some of the best cinematic experience I have ever had. That being said, I found "Shutter Island" to be much more superior, as "Inception" feels a little bit of a mumbo jumbo many times.

Good. "Shutter Island" is simply a masterpiece. The beginning of the movie suggests a very basic plot of a detective story, possibly a thriller. As the movie progresses, the plot becomes bigger and bigger with more and more complexity added to it. The way this happens is incredible. The pacing is really good. That is what makes the movie so interesting. And, even though the movie gets more complex, it is not difficult to keep up with the major plot points. And, the final twist is one of the best plot twists I have ever seen. I did not expect it at all. And, like the main character portrayed by DiCaprio, we are not ready to believe what is being told until a lot of reveals finally convince us. There are a lot of many things that might seem to be pointless before the final twist which are totally relevant with the story that is actually being told. The character of Edward Daniels is superbly written. We get to know where the character is coming from and we can get behind the character - yet another excellent thing about this movie. There are some dream sequences that seems like a filler, but is a major indication to the reveal. There are quite many "illusions" which feel very real, but carry no real meaning in the end. There are many additional things which may seem like a diversion from the story being told, but are actually enhancing it. Some dialogues between the main character and an imprisoned character get a very different interpretation after it's all set and done. So much of a complex story, yet no giant inconsistencies at all. It's just superbly written and directed and acted. It's totally different from "Memento" (2000) but still, has a lot of similarities. We get into the main character's head and we just get his interpretations, different types though. Towards the end, we don't want to step fully outside his head, but when we finally do, it's mind blowing. The ending moments were conceived by many to be confusing. But, if you keep up with the entire story, it's meaning is quite obvious. The movie is dark and psychologically engrossing. Yet it does have a short lived and very brief happy moment with the tiny plotline involving Dr. Cawley's motives. That's all I can say without getting into complete spoilers. Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo and Ben Kingsly have given some of the great performances till date. I don't have anything that bugged me. So no mixed or bad aspects of the film.

Conclusion. On the whole, for me, it's the movie of the decade. The decade is almost over, and still I have not got any movie in the league of "Shutter Island". It's a very engaging and thrilling movie. It's one of those films I consider to be an all time great.

Rating. Score : absolute 10/10 Grade : A+

I originally saw this film when it came out but couldn't remember it well enough to give it a rating or write a review, so a rewatch was in order. I viewed the film through the lens of already knowing the plot twist, which made it a whole different experience. The ending will be remembered throughout film history as one that showed just how viciously a well written script can flip an audience over. This really is a film you should see twice.