Shutter Island

*** - Leo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo (what the hell kind of name is Ruffalo, anyway?) play a pair of US Marshals who are sent to an island where crazy people are stored to investigate the disappearance of one of them in this Martin Scorsese helmed mystery/thriller. Or are they!?!? The first hour or so of this film is great, with nice chemistry between the lead actors, an intriguing mystery plot and good peripheral characters like Ben Kingsley’s and Max Von Sydow’s (who must be at least 200 years old now). However, the writer of this felt the need to follow the recent trend of making everything some sort of super-shocking twist, and that is when this film falls flat. There is a point while watching this that the viewer realizes that the whole first half was a ruse, and when that point comes, it completely ruins the rest of the film experience. Another minor quibble would be that there are a whole poop-load of scenes of DiCaprio just kind of running around the island somewhere. I could have done without a lot of them. I’m not sure, but I think Leonardo DiCaprio is Keyzer Soze.