Enlarge By Andrew Cooper, Paramount Pictures Strange doings: Leonardo DiCaprio, left, and Mark Ruffalo are detectives investigating a mysterious disappearance at an insane asylum. ABOUT THE MOVIE ABOUT THE MOVIE Shutter Island * * 1/2 out of four Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Emily Mortimer, Max von Sydow, Patricia Clarkson, Michelle Williams 
 
 Director: Martin Scorsese 
 
 Distributor: Paramount Pictures 
 
 Rating: R for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity 
 
 Running time: 2 hours, 18 minutes 
 
 Opens Friday nationwide From the first queasy scene, you are drawn into and captured by the ominous goings-on at Shutter Island. Leonardo DiCaprio, playing U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels, has lost the battle with seasickness as the ferry he's riding on the Boston Harbor approaches the forbiddingly craggy island that houses Ashecliffe Asylum. His destination is the stately but chilling institution for the criminally insane. It's 1954, and he is accompanied by partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of its inmates, who is a psychopath and a killer. From the moment they approach the rocky isle, the score — supervised by The Band's Robbie Robertson— pumps up the sense of foreboding with a creepy repetition of pounding musical chords. TRAILER: Get a sense of 'Shutter Island' It's technically masterful, as only a film by visionary director Martin Scorsese can be, and an almost unbearable sense of tension simmers and occasionally erupts in the first two-thirds of the film. The production design by Dante Ferretti is impeccable. Questions loom and rattle: Are the lunatics running the asylum? Is the entire terrifying place embroiled in a horrific conspiracy? Who can be trusted? And what does it take to catapult a rational person into madness? While Ruffalo is convincingly congenial, DiCaprio's blend of brooding and unease is riveting. This is the actor's fourth collaboration with Scorsese. His character is a sharp-eyed detective who is also damaged goods. As he struggles to subdue recurring memories of his war service and the tragic death of his wife, you realize that an assignment at a clandestine mental institution is not the best idea for a troubled guy like him. The rest of the ensemble is equally terrific. The officious but outwardly sympathetic Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) keeps us off kilter. He seems intent on preserving the status quo, but is he guilty of something more? He presents the marshals with their case: the mind-boggling escape of a delusional killer (Emily Mortimer). Cawley's smug colleague, Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), further obfuscates the situation. Hostility looms everywhere, emanating from both patients and staff. Along the way, there are flashbacks featuring Daniels' dead wife (Michelle Williams) offering guidance from beyond the grave. Her scenes are filmed in particularly vivid, bloody color, establishing a sharp juxtaposition to the gray and stormy environment of the asylum. Patricia Clarkson has a superb cameo as a portentous character. But there are weak spots. When focused on the insane asylum, the gloomy story — a Hitchcockian take on Dennis Lehane's novel — is unnerving and unrelenting. But it loses steam when it meanders into flashbacks, and a pat conclusion doesn't help. The denouement gets bogged down in large chunks of narrative explanation, presented in a strange blend of the overwrought and the obvious, undercutting the powerfully frightening scenes that went before. Also, a too-long and too-grisly climactic scene plunges what had been an enjoyable psychological thriller/horror hybrid into something far more dark and disturbing. As invested as we are in the agonized character superbly etched by DiCaprio, the twist feels both expected and convoluted. Still, despite its flaws, Shutter Island is worth seeing for the palpably nightmarish and gothic world conceived by Scorsese. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more ||||| It may not have any of the technological bells and whistles of the latest 3-D offerings, but no movie in recent memory immerses the audience so deeply in its look and feel as the old-fashioned, two-dimensional "Shutter Island." 
 
 It's not a great movie so much as it is great moviemaking. It's basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached. But the care, love and astounding skill of director Martin Scorsese, along with the claustrophobic story (based on the novel by Dennis Lehane), combine for a film that stays with you long after you've given up trying to figure out whether everything you've just seen really adds up. 
 
 It doesn't matter. For more than two hours, the audience is submerged in a world of increasing madness, shot and directed in such a way as to be almost tactile. A storm and hurricane figure into the story; at times you'll want to reach for a raincoat. 
 
 Leonardo DiCaprio plays Teddy Daniels, a federal marshal who arrives, seasick, at Shutter Island, an isolated hospital for the criminally insane, to try to find a missing woman institutionalized there after she drowned her three children. Teddy is accompanied by his new, deferential partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), of whom he knows practically nothing. 
 
 Once on the island, they're subjected to the rules of the place: No weapons, and everyone defers to Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the psychiatrist who more or less runs the place. Teddy, like Cawley, is mystified as to how the woman could have gone missing, since the hospital is so tightly - and creepily - guarded. To make matters more difficult, Cawley and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow) won't allow Teddy to look at patient information; instead, he has to conduct interviews with the patients, which lead nowhere. 
 
 Or do they? It turns out that Teddy has other reasons for wanting this case. His wife (Michelle Williams, seen in flashback) was killed in a fire, and he believes the man responsible is on the island, as well. He is beset by memories of his wife, as well as nightmares of his service in World War II, in which he helped liberate a death camp (something that does nothing to make him think any more fondly of Naehring). 
 
 A storm rages outside and is quickly turning into a hurricane; the ferry back to the mainland is shut down. Teddy is blinded by migraines. His suspicions mount - as do ours. 
 
 The mystery here is not as compelling as Scorsese's telling of it. The terrible beauty of the storm, the creepiness of the surroundings, the unease intensified by the patients who, for the most part, lurk about the margins, make for an unsettling experience - and a wholly enjoyable one, as well. 
 
 DiCaprio, who does his best work with Scorsese, is very good; you'll just have to trust me, because to say how and why would give too much away. Kingsley is satisfyingly difficult to read. The same can be said of Ruffalo. Ted Levine is fantastic in a brief scene as the warden, explaining his theory of man's true nature to Teddy. 
 
 For a while now, Scorsese has seemed more interested in making entertainments than searing personal statements, such as "Taxi Driver" or "Raging Bull." "Goodfellas" bridged the gap. Certainly "The Departed," his last non-documentary feature, which won Oscars for best picture and, finally, best director for Scorsese, falls into the former category. 
 
 And that's fine - as long as you make entertainments as well-crafted as "Shutter Island." If it's not destined to be ranked among Scorsese's greatest films, it's certainly one of his more-entertaining ones. And that's plenty good enough. 
 
 Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: goodyk. ||||| Film Reviews 
 
 Shutter Island -- Film Review 
 
 "Shutter Island" 
 
 Bottom Line: A movie from Martin Scorsese that defies you to believe in what you actually see. 
 
 BERLIN -- Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" is a remarkable high-wire act, performed without a net and exploiting all the accumulated skills of a consummate artist. It dazzles and provokes. But since when did Scorsese become a circus performer?The movie certainly keeps you in its grip from the opening scene: It's a nerve-twisting, tension-jammed exercise in pure paranoia and possibly Scorsese's most commercial film yet. With a top cast hitting their marks with smooth efficiency, "Island" looks like a boxoffice winner. Paramount opens the film domestically Friday Feb. 19.Laeta Kalogridis' screenplay is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, whose blue-collar crime novels have been turned into such movies as "Gone Baby Gone" and "Mystic River." But this story clearly derives from memories and images of old movies -- from 1950s Gothic mysteries and Cold War-era paranoia thrillers to 1960s movies cranked out by the Roger Corman factory (where Scorsese once toiled), especially its Edgar Allan Poe/Vincent Price chillers.You get an isolated island, howling weather, mad scientists, an ex-Nazi, tough cops, deranged patients and a penal hospital with crowded, filthy cells and corridors stretching forever -- possibly beyond sanity.Scorsese has given himself a film student's puzzle: Try to make a '50s-era thrill ride with today's techniques and technology. One senses his childlike delight behind every camera move and jump cut. As his audience squirms, he's in movie heaven.From the opening music chords, supervised by Robbie Robertson from existing source material, a sense of doom settles over the film's characters. In 1954, two U.S. marshals -- Teddy (Scorsese's go-to star, Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) -- watch the forbidding fortress that is Shutter Island loom larger and larger as their ferry approaches the island's only dock.In quick order, exposition rolls off the actors' tongues, like in those B-movies that lasted only 70 minutes. Shutter Island is a hospital for the criminally insane. One female psychopathic patient has gone missing, incredibly, from a locked room within the fearsome-looking Ashecliffe Hospital. A hurricane is approaching. The guards and psychiatrists then greet the lawmen with hostility and evasions. Everything screams, "Go back!"Teddy gradually warms up to his partner enough to take him into his confidence: He asked for this assignment. Unresolved issues await him on Shutter Island. His nightmares vividly underscore these past traumas. They involve his platoon liberating a concentration camp and witnessing its horrors. They involve the death of his wife and a former Shutter Island prisoner who talked to him about devastating medical experiments and funding by anti-Soviet groups.In fact, maybe these aren't nightmares at all. During daytime, Teddy experiences flashbacks and the presence of the dead, especially his late wife (Michelle Williams) and a little girl from the camp who asks, "Why didn't you save me?"The hospital's pipe-smoking chief psychiatrist, Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), preaches the humane treatment of patients. (He won't use the word "prisoner.") But his fellow shrink with a German accent (Max von Sydow) reminds Teddy of the dark side of the medical profession he encountered in the camp.When the storm hits, chaos reigns. Trees crash into buildings, electrical outages free prisoners, all communication with the mainland is cut off and the two marshals are as much prisoners as the patients.The story barrels forward into encounters with an escaped prisoner (Patricia Clarkson) hiding on the island and another prisoner (Jackie Earle Haley) who has been severely beaten. Then, suddenly, the escaped female killer (Emily Mortimer) is found -- just like that. Teddy isn't buying it.The problem, of course, is the viewer is in the same boat. Are Teddy's nightmares and ghosts because of something the warden has slipped into his drink? Are any of these encounters real? If so, which are real and which are ... imaginary?The big reveal, when it does happen, might be yet another fraud. Teddy certainly clings to his conspiracy theories.Scorsese is in full control of all three rings of this cinematic circus. Every lesson he learned, from Alfred Hitchcock to Don Siegel, is on display. Nearly every camera move is fraught with excitement. The music, costumes, props and the many rooms and halls of this fortress-prison are designed for maximum emotional impact.After finally getting that long-sought Oscar for "The Departed," perhaps Scorsese figures it's time to have a bit of fun. He isn't asking to be taken seriously here. This isn't "Taxi Driver" or "GoodFellas" or even "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." It comes closest in his oeuvre to "Cape Fear," but with a more commercial instinct.Let's hope this is a digression in his illustrious career, a way of playing with what Orson Welles called the "toys" of moviemaking. With Dante Ferretti designing his sets and Robert Richardson behind the camera, Scorsese certainly has the right playmates. Longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker weaves her magic by bringing images together in such a way that the audience can't quite trust what it sees.It's a pleasure to experience Scorsese as a circus master. One just hopes he doesn't continue in this vein.
– Martin Scorsese has crafted a gripping '50s-era thrill ride in Shutter Island, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as federal marshals probing a disappearance at a hospital for the criminally insane, say critics. The movie is a "nerve-twisting, tension-jammed exercise in pure paranoia—and possibly Scorsese's most commercial film yet," writes Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter. Shutter Island is "basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached," Bill Goodykoontz writes at the Arizona Republic, but Scorsese's "care, love and astounding skill" give it staying power. DiCaprio turns in his "most haunting and emotionally complex performance yet" as Scorsese "holds us in a vise-like grip," writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. The movie has plenty of flaws, including too many meandering flashbacks, but it's "worth seeing for the palpably nightmarish and gothic world conceived by Scorsese," writes Claudia Puig at USA Today.