SPOILER REVIEW: Leonardo DiCaprio stars as a U.S. Marshall sent to a hospital for the mentally insane to investigate the disappearance of one of the patients. But as the hospital tries to obscure the truth, DiCaprio’s character starts to lose his grip on reality. Martin Scorsese certainly knows how to create atmosphere and suspense, but Shutter Island suffers from a bad case of plot-twist fatigue. The problem with movies that pride themselves on being ‘twisty’ is that they lose the element of surprise. If you start throwing plot twists in the first ten minutes, as this film does, you’re basically telling the audience not to believe what they’re watching. You get them thinking, and then they figure the movie out long before it’s over. I know I did.

The cast includes fun supporting turns by Max von Sydow, Jackie Earle Haley, and Ben Kingsley. Patrica Clarkson’s scene was my favorite in the film. If the movie followed the logic her character presents, I might have liked it better. DiCaprio is good, I guess, but for whatever reason, I just can’t take him seriously as a leading man. Note to Scorsese: there are other actors in the sea. Step away from the DiCaprio.