Shutter Island

Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Leonardo DiCapario, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Emily Mortimer, and Max Von Sydow.

What to say about this movie from an esteemed director?  It’s basically an Emperor’s new clothes type of movie where the movie looks really good, really polished, and visually stunning but in the end there’s not really much there, because a lack of a good character destroyed a grain of a good movie.  What do I mean by this?  You can’t hang a movie on a twist and then not give the audience something to invest in.  You just can’t.  I figured out the twist in this movie just by watching the trailers and even then it wasn’t too hard to figure out a few minutes into the movie.  Then there wasn’t much left to be concerned about as the movie went on but what the main character had done to put himself into the twist.  Even when I found it what he had and all the loopy tee loos started happening near the end, which I thought were cool but I still was still so detached from Leo’s character that I didn’t care.  The movie needed more time to invest into the main character so I could actually care about the mystery being solved and not worry about a twist.  Sixth Sense did this in the most remarkable way ever.  That movie gave me a character to care about, so much so, that I was never, for one second, caring about a twist or looking for the twist, because I cared about the kid and I wanted to know about him.  Shutter Island is totally devoid of any type of caring about anything, which is a shame.  This movie has a really good storyline lurking underneath it only to be marred down by such a little thing as poor character development.  But then again this Hollywood I’m talking about where flashy and bright is the go to for everything they do.  There is no depth or development lurking out there and if it is there, it’s really hard to find.  In all actuality this movie made me want to go out and read the book because if I know Dennis Lehane, he put a lot more character into the story than this movie managed to.  

I don’t know what more bad things I can say about this film because obviously the public liked; I think it’s one of Scorsese’s highest grossing film.  But then again audiences have been conned before by way lesser movies (Pirates, Transformers, Brockhiemer movies, Tarantino movies, ect…ect…).  I just wasn’t conned by this movie.  Man did this movie look nice with great special effects thrown into it that really blended into the story line, way better than most typical Hollywood movies.  I wonder how the makers of this movie got that by Hollywood?  Somebody must have gotten fired over that little mishap.  

What has happened to Scorsese?  Man his movies used to have real edge and passion.  Hugo is the closest thing he’s done to really good movie since a long time ago, and one of his best directed movies in a long time, and one of the better movies to come out of Hollywood in a long time.  I liked Departed, but even it was just plain old Hollywood fluff.  But the good thing about Departed was that it knew it was Hollywood fluff.  I don’t mind Hollywood fluff as long as that movie (and the people making it) knows what it is, that’s one of the problems with Hollywood in general they don’t know fluff when they see it.  Everything they market, they market it likes it’s the best movie ever made.  Everything they market, they market it like that.  And people just eat it up.