Snipper: Shutter Island

Opening the new doors of psychological thrillers / Vortex of emotions

Snip-in:
A period movie, takes place in mid 1950s.It revolves around a mental asylum located in the East coast of the US (Boston).On the face of it hosts psychopaths who are dangerously and criminally insane. Whereas the undercurrents are, the hospital is 'ginny-pigging' the 'so called patients' to analyze the functions of human brains, develop medicines/therapies so as to create 'Humanoids' with specific mindsets. U.S. Marshal 'Ted' Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DeCaprio) hears about this undercurrent and was sent on an investigation mission to the 'Shutter Island' with a colleague of his. The story moves on revolving around his shrewd investigation techniques, his beliefs on his skills and dedication towards his job, his 'head-ons' with the Head Psychiatrist Dr. Crawly (Sir Ben Kingsley), love towards his dead wife and children, the never-say-die attitude till the very last frame of the movie.

The movie starts with a snow-whitish screen and a silhouette of something. That something starts appearing to be a big vessel emerging out of the dense fog as it comes closer to the camera. The movie takes the grip from the very first sequence and doesn't let you think about anything at least for next few days after watching it. It scores very high in all aspects of film-making and probably one of the greatest adoptions of a novel on the silver screen.

Snip-out
I simply couldn’t find any flipsides to the movie. However they could have done away from the violent scenes and could have made it just a psychological thriller. One thing which looks odd considering the very nature of Ted and his duties as US Marshall - a) At the start of the movie on the ship, he meets Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) as his colleague for the mission, wherein someone else was already identified and supposed to be joining him. b) In the subsequent shot, Ted is shown surprised when Chuck struggles to get his gun out of the holster while surrendering at the hospital / prison. The struggle is weird by the US Marshall standard. Even after coming across these 2 strange incidences about Chuck, Ted keeps faith on Chuck and shares all the secrets of his mission with him. Instead he could have shown as a little alerted / withdrawn / isolated from Chuck. The last one is about the gun that is used by Ted and Chuck, it's worth while validating the make to see whether it’s the same thing being used by US Marshalls during '50s. But again these need not be considered to be the Snip-outs.

Snip-O-Meter
Well a sure-winner for the Oscars (Academy awards 2011) in the below categories:
1. Best Movie: Apart from every thing else a great team of the Director-Actor duo one more time (The Aviator, The Departed)
2. Best Actor: Leonardo DeCaprio. He lived the 'Ted'. You can see the difference portrayed in his 2 characters- one as a WWII soldier and other as the U.S Marshall (The way he walks and carries as both these characters). But Ted as the Marshall is simply awesome. He has a wide scope of putting a number of emotions in the character and he has done that to more than perfection. Definitely the role of his life.
3. Best Director: Martin Scorsese. Should be his best work so far. Aviator was a great period movie as well and was nominated in number of categories.
4. Best Supporting Actor: Ben Kingsley may get nominated. However Mark Ruffalo has lots of chances to actually win this :-).
5. Best writing - Adapted Screenplay
6. And last but not the least, it can definitely be considered as one of the best DVD covers / Posters. And if a category exists for the same, it's a sure-shot winner, being a very captivating poster.

And well Big:-) thanks to the 'BigFlix' guy who recommended me this movie on a busy afternoon, and who was moreover kind enough to offer me this movie overruling the sequence of movies in my queue :-)