The average viewer has become accustomed to focusing more on "figuring out the twist" than actually watching the movie. This is thanks to so many films of the last few decades hedging all their bets on one gimmicky little MacGuffin. Thankfully, Scorsese's new film keeps you too busy to get very distracted. It does involve a plot twist, but Shutter Island is much more invested in the series of bends in the road that get you there, and the picture is better for it. The turn itself plays more cathartic than revelatory. The real key is to openly question everything from the beginning. You quickly collect so many conflicting theories that you can't do much other than attempt to solve the mystery at hand along with Leonardo DiCaprio's Edward (Teddy) Daniels.
Daniels has been paired with fellow U.S. Marshall Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to solve the disappearance of a female patient at the Ashcliffe Psychiatric Correctional Facility located on the titular island. Teddy is still overwhelmed by his wife's death and the things that he saw while liberating Dachau during the second World War. He opens the movie with a terrible case of seasickness on the only ferry that goes to and from the island.
Upon arrival, Teddy & Chuck are met with terse, confrontational treatment by the facility's staff, from Deputy Warden McPherson (John Carroll Lynch) to facility director Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley). Max von Sydow's introduction as Dr. Naehring evokes the sense of foreboding that emanates from the greatest cinematic vampires (pre-Twilight). Michelle Williams plays Teddy's wife in flashback. Emily Mortimer shows a side I've never seen from her. Jackie Earle Haley does a lot with very little time, as does another actor who is not credited. Ted Levine is best known by many in the general populace as the kindly Captain from TV's Monk, and his part as the Warden will show them flashes of Buffalo Bill, his most well-known role among cineastes. If you give him one verbal sparring match, he delivers a title fight. The economy of intensity the whole cast employs is thrilling and refreshing. Going in to very much detail cheapens the mystery and the film. I'll hold off any further praise aside from saying that, had this been a 2009 release, this cast would have been one of the five SAG nominees announced this morning.
In overall execution, Shutter Island maintains a degree of tension and suspense akin to the best films of Alfred Hitchcock. It delves into the human psyche with an overwhelming degree of complexity, made digestible by the tropes of a whodunnit. From within Scorsese's own repetoire, it most reminds me of Cape Fear (for obvious reasons), but much more so of After Hours.
It spoils nothing to mention that the movie is chock full of hallucination, misdirection, flashback, conspiracy, and ever-shifting levels of reliability within its protagonist. The sense of restlessness and self-doubt that afflicts Teddy arrests us in the opening minutes and does not diminish. Not only are Teddy's motivation and stability questionable, but we have those same doubts of every character on-screen at one point or another. Scorsese, his cast, editor, and cinematographer really do wonders with an otherwise generic procedural with a twist.
Critics and other audience members who declare "I had it figured out from the beginning!" missed the point of what is going on here. I have a strong feeling that hordes of internet critics, bloggers, journalists, and so on will claw each other's eyes out to be the first and loudest to yell "WTF? I am so much smarter than this plot dude, OMG!". Many of these are the same people who are not satisfied by any literary adaptations, whether they've read the book or not. That said, I would advise strongly against watching trailers for Shutter Island or reading the book upon which it is based in advance of seeing the film.
Paramount did not push back the release of this movie because it has some glaring quality issues (far from it), but rather, to prevent it from getting the short end of Paramount's awards season focus when they already have a frontrunner on their 2009 slate (Up in the Air). There's no reason to waste a potent wild card when you already have a strong hand. As for its craft and prospects, I can predict without hesitation that Shutter Island is going to kick-start awards season 2010-2011 on February 19th.