"Shutter Island"
Richard's Review: 3 1/2 stars
The last time Martin Scorsese went to Boston he had the biggest mainstream hit of his career and won an Oscar as Best Director. "The Departed's" change of scenery seemed to do him good so it shouldn't come as a surprise that his latest film is also set in the New England city, this time however, he isn't telling a tale of gangsters, but a story of the criminally insane -- "the bugsies" they call them -- on an piece of land in Boston harbor called Shutter Island.
Returning for his fourth outing with Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio headlines the all star cast, playing Teddy Daniels, a U.S. Marshall assigned to investigate the disappearance of a patient on the isolated Shutter Island asylum. Working with Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo), his new partner, he must keep a close grip on his own sanity. Is he insane or is he being driven insane?
I've kept the synopsis deliberately vague because there is so much going on in "Shutter Island," it is such a house of cards that revealing one detail too many could bring the whole thing down and spoil the experience of seeing it through fresh eyes. This will be a no spoiler zone, but that means being light on the details.
"Shutter Island" (adapted from a Dennis Lehane novel) is likely the most enigmatic movie Scorsese has ever made. It's a bold, risk-taking film, ripe with dramatic music, sweeping photography and unapologetically strange storytelling. It's a story of paranoia, a deeply psychological thriller that pays homage to Hitchcock films like "Vertigo" and "North By Northwest." Throw in a dollop of "The Snake Pit" and some Mario Bava you get an idea of the tone of the film.
He uses flashbacks, odd and deliberate lapses in continuity, weird camera tricks -- he runs the film backwards in one scene so it looks like smoke is flowing into, rather than out of DiCaprio's cigarette -- to create an atmosphere of creeping dread, one in which the viewer, and perhaps even the characters don't know what is real and what is not. Where many of his earlier films like "Raging Bull" and "Goodfellas" are are about a state of existence, "Shutter Island" is all about a state of mind.
Anchoring the film is a fantastic performance from DiCaprio who by times seems to be channelling Jimmy Stewart. Not the "Philadelphia Story" Stewart but the edgy, post war Stewart of "Rope" and "Vertigo." His performance seems artificial, as though he has spent too much time watching film noirs, but watch for the subtleties, the way he suggests his character's hidden depths with interesting line readings and reactions. It's a brave performance and one that doesn't reveal itself entirely until the film's final moments, but it's one that will hold up to multiple viewings.
The movie, for all its boldness, however, may not. It is perhaps a bit too enigmatic for its own good, its twist ending is unconvincing and a bit of a letdown, (for once I was wishing for a little M. Night Shyamalan influence), but even Scorsese's missteps have more interesting filmmaking than most other films at the multiplex.
"Shutter Island" is a difficult movie that demands more than most audiences are probably willing to give these days. It's an art film disguised as a police drama and will probably leave the crowds who loved "The Departed" scratching their heads.
"Defendor"
Richard's Review: 4 stars
In "Defendor" Woody Harrelson plays a man whose rich inner life spills out into his real life. By day he is dead-end-job-Arthur but by night he is Defendor, a masked superhero do-gooder. His task? To clean up the streets of Hamilton, Ontario. It sounds like the kind of thing we've seen before but Canadian actor turned director Peter Stebbings puts a unique spin on Arthur's story.
Speaking in comic book clichés—"Look out termites," he says, "it's squishin' time!"—and with a duct tape "D" on his chest Defendor and his homemade arsenal of weapons patrols the streets looking for crime to prevent. He's a bit delusional, but his heart is in the right place.
"Who writes your dialogue?" asks a bad guy, "Spiderman?"
"No, I do it myself," he answers innocently, before opening a can of whoop-ass on the guy.
His goal is to infiltrate the lair of Captain Industry, the crime king-pin Defendor believes to be responsible for all of Hamilton's civic woes. On his journey he befriends a drug addict with a heart of gold and battles a corrupt cop (Elias Koteas).
Gritty and very funny, this is a hard one to categorize. It's not exactly a comedy, nor is it a crime drama. It's somewhere in between. I'm not sure if that indefinable quality will make this a harder sell at the box office or not -- people like to pigeonhole their movies -- but for those willing to be go along for the ride the movie is an enjoyably genre-busting good time.
On paper Woody Harrelson's role looks unpromising. He's the disillusioned man with mental health issues who sinks into a fantasy world to help him deal with the pain of a troubled past. We've seen this before, but Harrelson's mix of sincerity and pathos in his reading of the character breathes life into a somewhat clichéd role. He's aided by a script—written by the film's director Peter Stebbings—that gives him room to firmly establish the character, both as a superhero who believes guns are for cowards and as a real person who is tormented by his mother's descent into a world of prostitution and drug abuse. It's a solid performance which could have gone wrong very easily and dragged down the entire movie.
Also very strong is Kat Dennings, best know for her turn as a 13-year-old girl who hires Samantha to handle publicity for her bat mitzvah on an episode of "Sex and the City" and "The House Bunny." Here she is the drug addicted hooker who doesn't exactly have the proverbial heart-of-gold, but does discover the goodness in herself.
Like its main character "Defendor" is a bit delusional—it's a low budget superhero flick going up against the Spidermans and Iron Men of the world—but like its main character I like its spunk.
