Probably this review is coming when almost all of you have seen the movie but no matter.
If by any chance you have not seen the movie, I urge you to do so, just for the ending if nothing else.
The movie have some heavyweight actors : Leonardo Decaprio, Ben Kingsley and Mark Ruffalo. Each one has acted well and all three have lived their part, so the movie is very convincing all the way through.
The story keeps you on your toes right from the beginning. It follows two federal agents – Teddy Daniels (Leonardo) and his deputy Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) go in a boat to Shutter Island. We learn that they are on a visit to an asylum for the criminally insane and they are going in order to investigate the escape of Rachel, an inmate, the night before. It is of utmost importance to find and take Rachel back due to the nature of the asylum. We learn that Teddy’s usual deputy was unavailable and Chuck joined him for this trip. They have not worked together before.
When they reach the island, the captain informs them that there is a big storm coming and that there would be no ferry service for a while. The asylum itself is guarded like a prison and we are told that it has Ward A for male patients and Ward B for female patients – from which Rachel escaped. The person who met them and gave this information is McPherson who is the deputy warden of the island. The chief of the asylum is Dr Cawley (Ben Kingsley).
McPherson also tells them that there is a Ward C for the most violent patients and due to security reasons, the deputies are forbidden from visiting this section, situated at the highest point of the island and is a converted fortress (and so fully secure) without either McPherson or Dr Cawley accompanying them.
When he asks them to hand over the weapons, Chuck protests and reminds them that he and Teddy are federal agents. However, they are told that they cannot enter the premises with weapons and relucatantly surrender their weapons.
Dr Cawley meets them and gives them an introduction of the facility. He says that there is a debate in the asylim as to whether the patients should be treated just with surgery (including lobotomy due to the violent nature) or with the latest psychotropic drugs which he, Dr Cawley, believes should be tried first on the patients.
Teddy complains of headache and the doctor provides him with some pills that he says are aspirin for the headache.
Rachel, the patient who escaped, Dr Cawley says just seems to have disappeared off the face of the island. She could not have gone anywhere but seems to have simply walked through the walls into thin air. She was admitted because she drowned her three children one by one and pretended that they were only sleeping. She was so far gone in delusion that she thought she was living in her home (in the island) and all the inmates were neighbours or serviceman like the postal worker.
When they are given the tour of the island, Teddy sees a lighthouse that is closed off and guarded by an armed guard and he is instantly suspicious.
They interview the staff and learn that Rachel was in group therapy the night before. She went back to her room after it ended and disappeared. In her room, under the floorboards, Teddy discovers a handwritten note that says ‘The law of 4. Who is 67?’
Teddy learns that the group therapy was led by a psychiatrist called Dr Sheehan. Teddy wants to interview him but is told that Dr Sheehan left in the ferry that returned from dropping them off and is off on a long vacation.
The story superbly builds up the tension and suspicion in order to deliver the knockout punch that would leave you gasping at the end. No, I am not going to give away the ending but it made waves when it came and even today packs a powerful punch.
Teddy’s (and your) suspicions are raised at this point, and he wonders how a physician was allowed to go on vacation just when one of the most dangerous patients had escaped the night before. What is really going on here?
Teddy’s background is introduced in a series of flashbacks – his history as a soldier in WW II and his work as a Federal agent. His loving wife, Dolores, we learn is dead but he feels she is still present to give him advise during critical moments of his life. Perhaps this is how he gets inspiration to think through complex issues. Even the flashbacks are visceral. He goes to Dachau concentration camp after the war came to an end and sees the miserable condition of dead Jews, whose bodies and bones are simply piled up. He is deeply affected by a lady in their midst, oblivious of all the gruesome misery around her, focused on the dead child she is cradling in her arms.
The scene with scattering ashes falling like snow is pure Scorsese, which adds considerable visual weight to the whole scene. Even flashbacks are not wasted in this film.
Dr Neahring, who is Dr Cawley’s boss, also happens to be visiting the asylum at the same time and Teddy dislikes him on site. The vague german accent triggers his memory of the Nazi atrocities. Dr Neahring does not help when he calls Teddy and Chuck as men of violence. He clarifies that they are not violent men but men who are used to be around violence and will not run away from danger.
When he says that the records of the patients requested by Teddy and Chuck cannot be released to them because the board of directors has forbidden providing access to any outsider, Teddy’s dislike boils over to rage and he threatens to abort the investigation and return in the morning, only to hand over the case to FBI, who have all the power to get the information they need.
Teddy and Chuck interview the patients but strangely, they seem to give just rehearsed answers. Chuck picks up on this right away when the answers to some questions are identical. But a patient distracts him (asking him to get her some water) and writes a note in his notebook when he is away.
It is lovely that Chuck calls Teddy ‘Boss’ all the time. When the next day they go exploring the island, Chuck asks Teddy to level with him and asks ‘Did a patient send you a secret message?’. Teddy shows him the notebook, where just one word is written : ‘RUN’.
Teddy gets to like Chuck as he works more with him and confesses that he has been trying actively to get this case assigned to him. Why? There is another inmate there called Laeddis who was a maintenance worker of the apartment where Chuck lived. He lit a fire in the apartment when Chuck was away and his wife Dolores died. He got off on a technicality but was arrested later for another murder and was sent here. When Teddy checked, there was no patient called Laeddis listed as an inmate in this asylum. Teddy knows that there is some bigger conspiracy going on here and had to find a case to come over and investigate.
He also tells Chuck about George Noyce, who has sent sometime here before being released and he intimated that there was some crazy research going on here, confirming his already growing suspicions.
Chuck wonders if they staged the disapparance of Rachel to draw him in here and asks him to be very careful.
McPherson comes across them and says that they were missing. They are now wet in the rain and when they are taken back, they are given a change of clothes – something that looks like the inmates dress but they are told that it is the uniform of the orderlies there.
When Teddy meets Dr Cawley, he argues with the doctor regarding the restrictions to his investigation. He suddenly gets a migraine again and refuses the pills given by Dr Cawley. Dr Cawley insists that he take them, and he complies, with misgivings. He then is taken to a lower room (cell) and falls asleep.
The next day the storm knocked out the power generator and the backup generator also failed. In the confusion, Teddy and Chuck manage to slink awaay and go into Ward C. There he meets a person who is sitting alone in a cell with his name as Laeddis. When Teddy confronts him, he finds that it is none other than George Noyce, who seems to be back on the island. George says that it is Teddy’s fault, because he kept asking him about Laeddis.
He says that Laeddis was indeed there, but was taken to the lighthouse to do lobotomy on him; that is where the strange experiments were being conducted on the patients.
Teddy and Chuck are told by Dr Cawley that Rachel has been found and he takes them to her cell. She, however, mistakes Teddy for her dead husband and starts yelling at him.
Chuck says that he managed to purloin Laeddis’ file but it has only the commitment papers of him. Now Teddy wants to go to the lighthouse and gets suspicious of Chuck when the latter tries to talk him out of it as a bad idea.
He leaves Chuck and goes exploring but when he is back, he only sees Chuck’s cigarette on the promontory. He thinks Chuck fell down dead and climbs down but reaches a cave midway when he sees light coming from there. He meets a woman with the knife. She is Rachel. She tells him that she was a doctor in the facility and found about their crazy experiments. When she threatened to expose them, they put her in a cell and concocted the story about her drowning her own kids.
She warns him that they will never let him leave either. They will concoct a story that he went crazy and lock him up. She asks him questions about him and says that they will use the trauma (his wife dying) as the cause of his going insane. She asked him not to take any medication they supplied (which he already had) and not to smoke any cigarettes they provided (which he had, from McPherson).
She says that the drugs take 36 to 48 hours to take effect and make him pliable to do their bidding. She also says that there will be tremors in his hand, which is a standard side effect – which he has.
Teddy then confronts Dr Cawley and says he is going back. He asks if they have seen Chuck. Dr Cawley says that he came to the island alone and that there was no deputy with him. Teddy realizes that they are putting their plan into action – the one Rachel had warned him about.
He is now determined to reach the lighthouse to the bottom of all this before it is too late. He creates a diversion and then outwits the guard and enters the lighthouse to see for himself.
The rest of the movie is the unexpected stuff so I will not go over those details.
Just let me say that the acting, the dialogs, the web of suspicion and misdirection, everything works great. You come away with the feeling that you have seen a great and satisfying movie.
The very end, that comes after the big reveal is also touching.
9/10
== Krishna
Spoiler Alert : I cannot review this without giving some of the twists away, so if you hate spoilers, please stop reading now (or at the end of the next paragraph)
This is an interesting movie. A Canadian-American joint venture. 
An excellent thriller, with a twist near the end. (This seems to be the fashion nowadays).
This is a horror film in the mould of a killer tormenting a girl with a disability. It has been done before, from way back when – Audrey Hebpurn’s 
It could have been a good movie but a whole lot of plot strings are twisted into confusing strands and so you really don’t know what they are trying to say. Some of it is to provide twists in the movie that makes you go ‘Ah, I did not see that coming’ but it is too complex that it takes away, at least for me, from the pleasures of seeing a simple tale unfold. There are also sudden twists that really make you go, ‘Hm that is totally out of character for this person’. 
bookspluslife 