First things first: Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's first dramatic feature since winning an Oscar for The Departed, looks like a creepy enough, well-pedigreed Hitchcockian thriller. Look -- it's Ben Kingsley! Max Von Sydow! Michelle Willilams! Mark Ruffalo! Patricia Clarkson! And listen -- it's Leonard DiCaprio, crossbreeding his Revolutionary Road style and a Chowderhead accent that's almost as scary as the sprawling asylum that traps him. The video is after the jump.
DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo arrive at the titular locale early on, a couple of trenchcoated, fedora-ed "federal mah-shulls" just dropping by to check out the escape of an inmate at the psychiatric hospital there. It's essentially the Alcatraz of mental institutions, overseen by dapper Ben Kingsley and a squad of doctors, orderlies and guards who seem to hiding something about the woman's disappearance. In any case they're hiding the men's guns, which they forfeited upon entrance. Because, of course, this being a maximum-security loony joint, nobody's in any danger, right?
And who even knows what the rest of this is about? Ruffalo conspicuously drops out after a while (I'm sure his character is just fine, maybe in the bathroom or something), and Williams has exactly no lines, but Clarkson looks effectively eerie and oracular behind a column of campfire flames. Kingsley and Von Sydow throw their tasteful canonical weight around, and DiCaprio -- plunging into the local customs of psychosis, paranoia and hallucinations -- warms up to the task of selling the movie by finally closing his mouth and allowing the green-screened cliffs and crashing waves do the heavy lifting. Is he miscast? Only four months until we find out for sure. And this being Scorsese, you know you will fork over the money to find out.
VERDICT: Sold, with reservations.