DVD: Shutter Island

Once upon a time Martin Scorsese made fabulous movies like Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, now he’s switched genres to make a psychological thriller and he’s lost his fabulousness in the process.

Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane and set in the 1950s, Shutter Island focuses on the efforts of two federal marshals, Teddy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), who are trying to track down a missing psychiatric patient (Emily Mortimer) from an apparently secure facility.

The island is situated miles off the Boston coast and can only be accessed by ferry, while the psychiatric hospital itself is surrounded by electrified fences and is heavily guarded, so how could a patient simply disappear? Teddy is suspicious from the outset and believes the chief medical officer, Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley), may be conducting illegal experiments on his patients. As Teddy digs deeper and the weather conditions on the island worsen he is forced to confront his own fears and anxieties, realising what he believes to be the truth is simply an illusion, while nightmares from his own past return to torment him.

While a hurricane rages over the island, Scorsese tries to ratchet up the sense of paranoia and impending doom with flickering lights, gloomy barred cells and strident music, but the one thing the film absolutely fails to do is to instill any sense of fear or trepidation in the viewer.

This is a thriller without thrills, a film with twists so blatant they come as no surprise and a conclusion that will leave you unconvinced and unimpressed. In fact, it’s all rather damp and depressing and downbeat.

It is only in flashback scenes of Teddy’s experiences in the war and with his family that Scorsese’s talent of old flickers into life, only to die back again as we return to the present.