Martin Scorsese’s “Shutter Island” is proving to be a polarizing work.
While most critics agree it’s a minor work from the auteur, some do unabashedly love the genre tropes, the deliberate artifice, while others are finding it predictable and a long, uneven slog. Even the the top critics on RT who generally warm to Scorsese’s work (or sometimes give him a pass) are only settling on a 65% rating. So reviewers are mixed and it’s apparent here on The Playlist too as Drew Taylor gave the film a very positive review calling it a “more artful, cerebral, and emotionally captivating movie” than “The Departed.”
To each his own, but this writer respectfully disagrees, though we’ll try and keep it brief.
We suppose Scorsese found himself in the position— as he’s already suggested in the New York Times — that if he tried to shorten his overly long (by about an hour) “Shutter Island,” the film, like a jenga puzzle, would instantly fall apart because there seems to be no other logical reason why the picture is so laboriously long, and therefore robbing itself of the beating pulse that’s supposed to drive this type of thriller.
Overwrought and dripping wet in film noir tropes and Hitchcock-ian paranoia, “Shutter Island” is unusually slow and saps the viewer of whatever enthusiasm they may have for its visual and technical mastery. While much is to be admired, subtlety is not one of the films strengths, which in the end has never been Scorsese’s hallmark anyway, but the tortoise-like pace of the film ultimately undoes it rather rapidly. The elephant-like delivery of foreshadowing doom and dread is also just too over-the-top. And emotionally, there’s not much to cling to either. It’s an unapologetic B-movie, but even Scorsese’s unblushing noir exercise with “Cape Fear” was much more engaging, not to mention compelling. It’s blatant movieness is what will keep some people (like this writer) mostly emotionally removed from what transpires.
It’s as if the director is so in love with each frame he cannot cut slice even a furtive glance, let along superfluous dream sequences that ultimately do little in favor of the narrative or expository scenes that could use a serious trim. While these dream sequences are fine on their own and not as embarrassing as one worried about, 2 and half hours later you wish there were maybe two of them instead of five.
Laeta Kalogridis’ original script moved like a shark and conversely, Scorsese’s adaptation moves like a frog taking a leisurely swim in a pond. “Shutter Island” is not inert or terrible, there’s exemplary use of music, some strong performances (generally the tender-hearted and empathetic Ben Kingsley who completely subverts the character on the page), and some visual flair that has to be admired, but as a thriller or a drama. Well, its not that dramatic or thrilling. [C]