Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Sir Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, Max von Sydow, Emily Mortimer, Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley.

138 mins

★★★

THE trailer for Shutter Island makes you expect one of those ghostly prison dramas in which people leaping unexpectedly from the shadows. Seeing the name of director Martin Scorsese, one of the acknowledged modern masters of cinema, atttached to the film makes you hope for something more. But there isn’t.

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For all the classy cinematic gloss, movie buff references, capable performances and a story designed to keep you guessing until the end (although I sussed out the twist early on), this is a run-of-the-mill psychological thriller.

The opening sees a boat emerging from thick fog, making its way to Shutter Island. On board are two US marshals, Teddy Daniels (DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (Ruffalo). This is the Fifties so no modern psycho babble worries staff at Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, presided over by Dr Cawley (Kingsley).

He’s called the lawmen to find a missing patient (Mortimer) who’s vanished without trace.

What with Dr Naehring (Von Sydow) creeping around creepily, the duo have their work cut out getting a sensible word out of anyone.

The weather’s pretty awful too with high winds and pelting rain, not to mention a crazy patient round every corner with the threat that the patients could be taking over the asylum at any moment.

As the plot requires, everyone seems either suspicious or insane, and in extreme cases suspiciously insane. And the film goes on forever. Keeping the tension taut and tight for more than two hours defeats even a director as skilful as Scorsese.

With more than 1$00 dollars taken at the US box office so far, this could end up as Scorsese’s most commercially successful movie. What it won’t be remembered as is one of his best.