Shutter Island **** (2010, Leonardo DiCaprio, Emily Mortimer, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Max von Sydow, Michelle Williams, Patricia Clarkson) – Classic Movie Review 5619

Director Martin Scorsese’s unusual and disturbing mystery horror thriller is atmospheric, eerie and highly successful. It is set in 1954 in Boston’s secluded Shutter Island Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane, where US marshal Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives to investigate the disappearance of a patient.

DiCaprio gives a strong and compelling lead performance and Scorsese ensures a powerful, sinister-seeming neo-noir movie with a really great production and a very smooth-running piece of celluloid.

Mark Ruffalo plays Daniels’s officer buddy, Ben Kingsley plays the hospital’s head psychiatrist, and Michelle Williams plays Daniels’s wife.  Also in the starry supporting cast are Emily Mortimer, Max von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, Ted Levine, John Carroll Lynch, Elias Koteas, Robin Bartlett and Christopher Denham. All of them are tremendous.

Laeta Kalogridis writes the screenplay based on Dennis Lehane’s 2003 novel.

Its more than $294 million worldwide take was a record at the time for Scorsese.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5619

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