Shutter Island
We are bracing ourselves, not too nervously, for what looks like a cheesy haunted-house thriller from Martin Scorsese. After all, the novel has the literary pedigree of Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone), and it’s Scorsese directing, for crissakes. But Shutter Island has all the makings of a bumpin-the-nighter: U.S. federal marshals investigating a missing murderer sprung from a hospital for the criminally insane. It’s the cast supporting Leonardo DiCaprio that has us most confident this one will deliver: Jackie Earle Haley, Ben Kingsley, and Max von Sydow. (The atmosphere will clearly be bald and ominous.) The 1950s setting is also promising, classing up the tired premise, and putting us in mind of Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear, a surprisingly vital entry in his filmography. Hey, if Scorsese can turn the Edith Wharton period piece The Age of Innocence into a visceral triumph—as he did in 1993—he should have no trouble here.
