By Robert McElligott
Martin Scorcese is well known for making movies that can be loosely described as intense, and Shutter Island delivers on Scorcese’s long standing tradition of making the audience gasp. The film has all the right ingredients for intensity; it’s set on insane asylum island and it features Leonardo DiCaprio’s ever-deepening forehead fissure. However, this is worlds apart from Scorcese’s Goodfellas or Raging Bull; there are no suave gangsters or shoot-outs.
Scorcese did something very different with Shutter Island; it is intensely psychological– if you don’t give it serious thought you won’t understand it until the very last scene. The plot is about two detectives searching for an inmate that supposedly escaped the asylum, but as the story drives on, you begin wondering what is real and what is imaginary, who’s insane and who isn’t.
Even if you completely fail at figuring the movie out, it’s still really enjoyable. Scorcese made a film that is purposefully baffling but fun to watch regardless, and he provides the perfect ending that answers every question raised throughout the movie.