SHUTTER ISLAND

dMYD
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio

M

It’s the ‘70s and dope-smoking, guilt-ridden Jewish celluloid-addict Marty ‘Eyebrows’ Scorcese is thrown into the back of a giant penis on wheels and deposited in an abandoned Technicolor warehouse by B-Movie Impresario and Poe-Acolyte Roger Corman. The bug eyed king of crap proceeds to pour eighty-six tons of industrial grade exploitation know-how into young Marty’s open mouth in a desperate bid to pass on everything he knows in case of an early syphilis-related death, before running out into the night and making seven films before he goes to bed. Marty, left to die, collapses under the weight of B-Movie technique and enters a forty year fever dream of masculinity issues, alienation and the Italian-American experience. But now he’s woken up, ran to the bathroom, and sicked up Shutter Island as a congealed mess of everything Corman crammed him with in ’72. So Scorcese has made a B-Movie then, but a B-Movie with a budget, a B-Movie based on a novel… a modern day crap-flick, with the integrity and good will that come from making nearly half a century of great movies. Somebody else already does this, with roughly half the respect. Tarantino’s Death Proof and Inglorious Basterds gloriously pastiched and applauded the genius of the Bs with a smile and a kick to the balls and despite being regressive and simplistic they were fun and funny, true to the spirit of the genre and directed with such verve and panache that nobody cared that they were essentially nonsense. Scorcese doesn’t quite work that way. Shutter Island is a grim, long, lonesome affair, devoid of fun but full of ridiculousness, with a twist that could be seen from Cardiff if it was locked in a room at the top of the Empire State Building. The dopey plot might have cut it back in the ‘50s with a bit more rough and readiness but here, buried under the slick camera work and insane period detail that propagate all Scorcese flicks it all seems a bit jaw-dragging and overblown. A festival of ham-acting is revived from the old days, but looks even stupider with all the HD-readiness and reality-bolstering CGI that scuttles around the corners of every modern thriller, meaning there’s no empathy for any of the characters or any real interest in what’s going to happen next or why. Taking the B-Movie approach to a thriller is obviously nice and cockle-warming for geriatric directors and walking picture-house-history deposits but essentially doesn’t work for an audience more attuned to subtlety and realism in its best pieces, crucially resulting in a yawning gap of non-thrills and heavy-handed exposition scenes. However, being Scorcese it’s all done with a sheen of class and professionalism, a cut above the other work-a-day wankers that Hollywood rents out on a regular basis to ruin ‘trilogies’ and prequels. It’s just not in the spirit of the Bs. Something of a confusing mish-mash oddity then, but shit-fuck-damnit not a very enjoyable one.
Jab this in your pipe and steam it instead, a true wedge of quality-non-quality from the cock of the bargain-basement walk: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=C2E68D68B0CCA888&search_query=roger+corman+fantastic+four Martin can still learn from the Master.