Runtime: 138 minutes
Directed by: Marty Scorsese
Starring: A great cast
From: Paramount
Or: when dumb opinions from the past prevented me from seeing a great movie much sooner.
Last night I finally pulled the trigger and gave it a shot. It was a movie I never thought of seeing theatrically; a rental was never made because long ago I heard a podcast-defunct for years-give it a short negative review. Even with all the positive praise I heard and my suspicion that the bad review was full of bologna, Shutter Island went on the back-burner. Finally, it was streamed last night on Netflix and that episode was even worse than I recalled. To be kind, the name of the podcast won't be revealed and instead I'll just mention that the bad take in general was downloaded a-new and heard again for the first time in probably a decade... yikes.
Those that don't like Shutter Island because of the big twist, it is comprehensible to me and shade won't be directed your way. After all, the OTHER complex 2010 Leo movie is one I found to be a convoluted mess that was no fun to watch... yes, I am referring to Inception. But back to Shutter: I heard once again a poor 10 minute review of a film where three people totally missed the point of what the picture was even about. Those that don't like Island, at least I'll presume that you understood why there was greenscreen and why it did look artificial-that is because none of those three guys did. Besides the surface explanation was that it was a modern way of doing those fake-looking backdrop scenes for a motion picture set in the 1950's, the subtext should have been obvious once the big reveal was made. Guess not. Worst of all, there was not a 4th person that offered a dissenting opinion and tell them why they were wrong. Honestly, not one thought hard about why SCORSESE did it that way. Sigh...
But nevermind those dissenting opinions-it was a film that beforehand where my opinion was in question, but it turned out to be great. It mixed several genres in a delicious concoction with a great cast and tremendous talent behind the camera (including an awesome score that helped set the atmosphere) that tells a story which at first appears to be an insane tale that gets crazier the longer it goes but actually is a treatise concerning several serious and difficult subjects, told in a movie that often is incredibly intense. It is not a cheery and happy movie-even by Scorsese standards-yet it was never a punishing slog. It was a plot I was engrossed in before and after the twist. A great cast definitely helps, even if-as people have said since 2010-Leo at times looks like he's playing dress-up as a rather youthful-looking United States Marshal. Mark Ruffalo also did a quality job, as well as Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow as the apparent villains. Even those who are only on screen for a few minutes (such as Jackie Earle Haley and Patricia Clarkson) delivered with their performances.
Again, those that sour on the movie once it takes the left field turn, I get it. I am pretty confident that everyone reading this will realize this twist (which I hear was in the novel the movie was based on) wasn't a cheap gimmick and instead was a device that allowed for a difficult story to be told in a different way. While this should have been watched by me a decade earlier, at least I saw a great motion picture last night.
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