The later years of Martin Scorsese’s career have been filled with experiments and easy swings, and Shutter Island thankfully falls into the former category. Not that Shutter Island is anything groundbreaking, but in the context of Scorsese’s filmography, it gives him a chance to lean into the detective film noir themes he has been toying with his whole career. Shutter Island is a puzzle-box mystery thriller that relies on its oppressive moods to trap the audience and uses a solid Leonardo DiCaprio to catapult us into an inescapable labyrinth. Scorsese’s direction remains remarkably vibrant and youthful, mischievously teasing the central mystery subtly.
Shutter Island follows DiCaprio and his partner, played by Mark Ruffalo, as they investigate the disappearance of someone with a mental health condition on the island. The movie lovingly plays into its genre tropes and gives Scorsese his chance to don his hat and light up a cigar to smoke. Nothing about Shutter Island is particularly subtle or taken seriously. Instead, Scorsese knows the popcorn value of a movie like this and entrusts his actors with a similar sense of playfulness. Shutter Island isn’t the best late-stage Scorsese movie, but it does show why he has been able to adapt to the modern industry by using more than just his name.
His later work doesn’t necessarily fit into the genre film category; if anything, he has taken delight in exploring similar themes from an older perspective. Shutter Island is one of his more overlooked movies, but it shows you everything you need to know about the Scorsese we have today.
‘Shutter Island’ Is a Love Letter to Film Noir
Scorsese’s later movies, like Killers of the Flower Moon or even something like Hugo, don’t have that same sense of vitriolic anger at the system that something like Taxi Driver has. His movies have an added sense of maturity, not just because he isn’t a goodfella anymore, but because he is more interested in pointing out atrocities and injustice rather than reveling in them, except for something like The Wolf of Wall Street, which is mostly glorification. Shutter Island sits somewhere within this boundary. When it leans into its genre, it doesn’t come across as gross as The Wolf of Wall Street can, at times. Shutter Island is a more restrained structural effort, which is what makes the twist effective. It puts us in the middle of the horror like all of his movies, but it feels sad to be there.
Shutter Island is a film noir with a modern, psychological spin that feels like a weary look at the world and the violence that can lie within it. Scorsese is showing us the horror, and along with us sighing because he can’t bring himself to look away either. That’s what makes film noir impactful: the inevitability of violence. Shutter Island playfully sets this up with misdirection that doesn’t feel lazy or wasteful. By the time the twist hits, it all locks into place, and all that’s left after the adventure is bitterness at what’s happened, yet being unable to change it.
‘Shutter Island’ Has a Great Twist
Without giving spoilers away, Shutter Island’s final act escalates dramatically to a haunting conclusion. It’s depressing and twisted but still tinged with an atmospheric reality like it was only ever going to end in tragedy. Shutter Island doesn’t feel like Scorsese’s younger films because he doesn’t offer a power trip solution. The film noir elements work well because they create certain expectations for a popcorn movie like this, and casting DiCaprio in a dingy role sells it more.
DiCaprio works well in the role because he’s more than an everyman, and his partnership with Scorsese makes it feel like they’re working with decades of cinema to find where they can make their dent. Shutter Island takes some elements from film noir but doesn’t overplay them. It feels big in moments when the claustrophobia of the location is emphasized, but the psychological torment is all very insular. Not much of it spills onto the island itself; it’s the island that feels like a character of its own, toying with DiCaprio. Shutter Island knowingly references the genre, but not in a way that necessarily wants to draw comparisons. It wants to draw you to these classics only to make you feel smaller on Shutter Island by comparison.
‘Shutter Island’ Is a Solid Late-Scorsese Entry
Shutter Island is a good example of what Scorsese has spent the latter years of his career trying to do, not reinventing his perspective, but instead showing the reality of what violence and power can mean. It isn’t as masculine as GoodFellas or The Departed. It’s weaker, more vulnerable, and more adept at using genre tropes to subvert expectations. The film noir detective can be a removed character, but Shutter Island forces DiCaprio into the fray and peppers the scenes with gentle clues as to the final result.
When it comes, it doesn’t feel satisfying in a traditional way; it just feels miserable but in a good way. It’s an effective twist because it brings everything crashing down around us and leaves us with nothing but the fragmented shards of where it all came from. Very few twists hold up on a second viewing, but Scorsese uses his cinematic knowledge to show us how vulnerable the removed detective can be.
Shutter Island is a solid Scorsese film that deserves more attention today for how the director toys with us, blurring our vision with mystery and bitterness. And a bit of cigarette smoke. Shutter Island is streaming on Paramount+ now.
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2025-03-17 02:02