Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives at Shutter Island, an asylum for the criminally insane, to help locate a missing person/patient. He is met with restrictions and resistance at every turn and cannot seem to get a straight answer.  One thing he is sure of there is much more going on here than just a missing patient. As he digs deeper he feels his safety, freedom, and life are at risk; but pushes on as he sees a chance to finally come face to face with his wife’s killer.

It begins as a cop-er type mystery complete with trench coats, accents, and dialog. Quickly though things seem off and you can tell there is much more going on. It is a dark mystery/thriller with a noir inspiration behind it. With movies like this there are several options of what the ending will be and because of that you will probably be able to put together what is happening before they meant for you to. Believe me though they really put up a good fight in keeping you guessing because even if you think you know how it will end situations will pop up that try and prove your guess wrong.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Sir Ben Kingsley are both excellent with what they are given; but I could have done without so much of the mobster era type lines & accents. And the whole island, buildings, sets are perfect for the story. There are a variety of special effects used for dreams and other things and those are often beautiful and creepy all at the same time. The costumes are generic and music I don’t remember anything about it. I think that about covers the details, moving on.

This is one of those movies you will either like or grow bored with and stop part of the way in. I must say that there was more action involved throughout than I was expecting and it didn’t feel like it was dragging. It is a long movie (over 2 hours) and it feels longer, perhaps because they cram so much into such a short amount of time. I checked to see how long the movie had been playing sure that it was starting to approach the end and found out that it was only an hour in. Once again though it did not feel like it was dragging it was just so much going on that it felt like more time had to have passed.

The Scorsese/DiCaprio match up in my opinion either works really well (The Departed) or it flounders (Gangs Of New York) and generally has fans divided in their judgment. For me “Shutter Island” worked; but will easily have many feeling the opposite.