Cinema Nova, 18/02/2010
Status: Still behind, but I’m working on it
Me? I’m not what you’d call a huge fan of Martin Scorsese. I don’t doubt his talent as a director, but he rarely tells stories that I’m interested in. But I saw the preview for Shutter Island before Daybreakers t’other day and thought it looked on the more interesting side of ‘myeh’. I gave it a go and you know what, turns out it was about as 'myeh' as you can get.
LEONARDO DiCAPRIO (Gangs of New York, The Aviator) plays a US Marshall investigating the disappearance of a criminally insane patient from a mental hospital island. There are scares and surprises in a wonderfully realised 50s mental hospital, although the overbearing music sometimes ruins an otherwise beautifully crafted mood.
Adapted from the book by Denis Lehane (who also wrote Gone, Baby, Gone and Mystic River), the attention to the source material’s detail serves the film well in a promising first half, but soon becomes a liability in a tangle of convolution.
All in all, I feel much the way about the film’s contributors as I did before: DiCaprio can be good; MARK RUFFALLO (Zodiac), BEN KINGSLEY (The Wackness) and PATRICIA CLARKSON (The Station Agent) are always great; and I remain undecided and unconvinced about Scorsese.
