The Avengers (2012)

Over the past decade, I (well, okay, we) have been blessed and cursed with the success of the comic book movie.  A sub-genre that was once scorned and ridiculed --- and rightly so, for the most part --- was given new life with the successful launches of the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises.  Since those days, we have seen some great comic book movies (The Dark Knight) and some truly awful ones (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), along with a scattering of less traditional/costume-free entries (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World).  The true test of comic book movies, though, comes from how true they can stay to their roots.  I'm not arguing that movies should adhere to the ridiculous continuity of their pulped roots; I'm saying that the logic and tone of the source material is essential to a good adaptation.  One of the most common occurrences in comics is the cross-over; characters from one comic make a guest appearance in another, hopefully impressing new readers and gaining new fans.  Until recently, each comic book movie series took place on its own, in an isolated bubble.  Starting in 2008, though, Marvel Studios began to plan for a Marvel Movie Universe, where their superhero films would all occur in the same general time and place, eventually leading up to a huge team-up movie, The Avengers.  It's a simple idea, but it was also pretty damn risky.  It meant launching multiple movie franchises and having them all be successful enough to encourage the development of The Avengers, where characters require no origin stories and the film can focus on huge special effects.  Is comic book publishing logic enough to make an entertaining movie?  In a word, "yes."

In two words, "Hell, yes"

I don't feel like explaining the plot of The Avengers in detail.  It's not a bad story, but I'm going to go with a "simpler is better" attitude here.  A desperate and petty demigod, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) has stolen a tesseract.  What the hell is a tesseract?  Well, here, it looks like a glowing cube, but can apparently do all sorts of things. 

Like make Loki give nasty grins

Loki manages to use this cube to open a doorway in space, allowing aliens to invade Earth because...well, I mentioned the desperation and pettiness, right?  Well, Earth has been through quite a lot over the past few summers, as chronicled in the documentaries Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger; in other words, Earth has some heroes available to defend it. 

Namely, Triangle Man and Person Man

And that's pretty much the plot.

Do you really need more than that in your action movie?  The Avengers does what it sets out to do; it combines a bunch of superheroes in a movie and gives them a suitably intimidating enemy to fight.  The acting in the film is not terribly dramatic, but it's pretty good for what it is.  Robert Downey, Jr is still great as the egotistical and charming Tony Stark (AKA Iron Man).  If this film leaned on any one character in particular, it was Iron Man.  Luckily, Downey is still enormously entertaining in this role.  Chris Evans showed a little bit more range as Captain America this time around, thanks to larger doses of humor and smaller doses of melodrama than in his own movie. 

...and lots and lots of posing

Chris Hemsworth is still fine as Thor, but he spent most of his time here fighting or standing in the background.  The big surprise in The Avengers was how awesome Mark Ruffalo was as the Hulk.  Ruffalo was less tragic than his Hulk movie predecessors, and that went a long way toward making him more fun to watch.  Of course, the most awesome Hulk stuff happened thanks to CGI, but Ruffalo set the stage for it well by making his character seem downright reasonable.

Above: realizing how much better 13 Going on 30 would be with a Hulk

But The Avengers are not made up solely of characters who have headlined their own films.  The group also includes the marksman archer Hawkeye (Jeremey Renner) and the super-spy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson).  Renner is okay --- it's hard to justify an archer on a team with Thor --- but this role doesn't have enough meat for him to really do much with.  Johansson was considerably less impressive.  Granted, her character was utilized decently, even if she seems way out of her class in the battle scenes; still, the character was boring.  She doesn't carry a lot of scenes on her own, though, so that and her tight pleather outfit more or less balances the defects in her character.

ScarJo, in her biggest action scene.  Even she doesn't buy it.

What about the rest of the cast of thousands?   Samuel L. Jackson finally got to be onscreen for more than a few minutes as Nick Fury and...honestly, I wanted to see him be a bigger bad-ass.  It's not a big deal, but I was hoping for at least one scene where he does something that made my jaw drop; he wasn't bad, but he wasn't jaw-droppingly good, either.  I enjoyed Tom Hiddleston as Loki, even if he was a touch whiny.  Clark Gregg had his most important part and surprisingly wound up being the heart of The Avengers.  It was a little melodramatic as a plot device, but Gregg very likable here.  The rest of the recognizable cast was fine, but contributed little.  Colbie Smulders, Stellan Skarsgard, and Gwyneth Paltrow had the most to do, although only Paltrow was particularly likable.  And if you like playing "spot the actor," you will enjoy looking for Powers Boothe, Harry Dean Stanton, and Alexis Denisof.

The key to the success of The Avengers came from screenwriter/director Joss Whedon.  Whedon has been able to deliver some great lines for many years, but this is easily the best script he has produced to date (that landed on the big screen, anyway).  It might be a little light on emotion, but what little heart it has is taken advantage of fully.  This is a very well-paced action movie, with enough downtime to allow for humor, but enough seriousness to not wind up a Last Boyscout clone.  The secret appears to be how well he times his beats; Whedon did a great job playing with audience expectations, even when it was only slightly.  I have never really thought of him as an actor's director --- I suppose I thought of him as a story-first sort of guy --- but I loved how he had all these heroes portrayed.  The characters butted heads in a believable way and worked together in a way that made sense, too.  Surprisingly, the least likable hero in the film (Black Widow) fell into Whedon's historical comfort zone (strong female leads), but that was a small price to pay for how well he handled the movie's headliners.  I was also impressed with some of the action scenes.  There is one in particular, which shows each Avenger doing their thing in turn, as the camera pans from one hero to the next, that was just awesome to watch on the big screen.

First and foremost, though, The Avengers is an action movie.  And that is an understatement.  Free of boring origin stories or emotional investment, this film was able to provide action scene after action scene, many of which could have been the cool climax to a lesser movie.

 Each scene wowed, but the final battle, which took up a substantial portion of the movie, was thoroughly awesome.  This didn't have to be the case; wanton destruction does not necessarily make a movie fun or exciting (Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I'm looking at you).  But The Avengers was both.  I think it is because each hero had multiple occasions to do something cool; with so many characters swaggering onscreen without interfering with each other, the audience gets scene after scene of characters taking turns at awesomeness.  I should also point out how fantastic the Hulk looked in this movie.  This isn't the first time somebody has created a CGI Hulk, but this was the first time that they used full motion capture; I don't know how much of a difference it made, but his face did look pretty Ruffalo-like.

Remember that time Mark Ruffalo was shot with lasers?

Even better than the motion capture was the general attitude of the Hulk in this movie.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone by over-explaining it, but the Hulk almost stole the show.  To put it another way, The Avengers does such a good job rehabilitating the Hulk character that I can't wait for another Hulk movie.

The Avengers is, of course, not blemish-free.  It is a big, dumb action movie, after all.  The general plot of the first half was a little weak; "get captured" is rarely a step in an excellent scheme.  The aliens were a little generic.  I would have liked to see more types of alien attackers, but I suppose they were all essentially faceless henchmen.

Literally faceless

Hawkeye and Black Widow never really justified their inclusion in this story.  I don't think either character was far off from fitting in, but neither really clicked, either with each other or the rest of the cast.  The post-credits reveal of the behind-the-scenes villain might have made a handful of comic fans titter, but it was nowhere near enough to get the average moviegoer excited.  Are any of these problems enough to seriously dent the fun factor of this movie?  Not really.  Of course, an action movie is only as good as its villain, and Loki wasn't quite dastardly enough for my tastes.  Still, Hiddleston played the part well and made him evil to a satisfying degree.

Another flaw: when was Hawkeye in Inception?

How good is The Avengers?  I would argue that it is the best pure action movie to come out in at least a decade.  Please feel free to disagree with that statement; I have put some serious thought into it already and am primed for a fight.  Chances are, you already know how much you will enjoy The Avengers.  Fans of action movies and comic book flicks will be in love.  No matter how good you think it will be, you're underestimating it.  If you're on the fence, this is one of the most pleasurable summer popcorn flicks ever.  If you are tired of soulless comic book movie adaptations, then this Frankenstein's monster made of the wet dreams of every marketing team everywhere will not change your mind.  It is what it is, and it's possibly the best of what it is.  I normally have to take a few grains of salt when sitting down to enjoy a comic book flick, but The Avengers is so much fun that I fully expect it to join the illustrious ranks of Die Hard and Predator in my action movie library.  In other words, I'm planning to watch this a few dozen more times and expect to love it every time.

The Kids Are All Right

Mark Ruffalo has come full circle for me.  The first time I saw him, in You Can Count On Me, he played a charming and cool (but immature and selfish) brother/uncle that can't quite get his act together.  In The Kids Are All Right, he plays a charming and cool (but immature and selfish) sperm donor dad that has found a niche for himself and doesn't know what to do with the knowledge that he is a father.  Congrats, Mark, your character has grown up a little.

Actually, the story is not really about Paul (Ruffalo); it is about Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) and their two kids, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson).  Joni and Laser are half-siblings, with Nic having carried Jules in the womb and Jules having Laser, with both kids sharing the same sperm-donor father.  Life is pretty good for their family --- the kids seem pretty well-adjusted and they have a pretty sweet home in California --- but there are two problems.  The first and most obvious is Joni preparing to leave for college in a few weeks.  The other problem is the stagnant relationship between Nic and Jules; they are becoming a bickering old couple and decades-long problems are starting to make their way into everyday arguments.

At the urging of her brother, Joni contacts the sperm bank to contact their sperm daddy.  Being a pretty laid-back quasi-hippie, Paul is agrees to meet the kids.  Pretty soon, they are spending more and more time together, which adds more friction to Nic and Jules' relationship; since they are (not surprisingly) very liberal parents, they theoretically support the kids meeting their bio-dad, but in practice he's an unexpected monkey wrench in their last few weeks with Joni.

While considered a comedy, I would argue that this is a drama that gets some humor out of intentionally awkward scenes.  So don't walk into this expecting a lot of laughs.  The film, co-written by director Lisa Cholodenko, seems to cherish real-life moments that tend to make me cringe.  People without good singing voices singing Joni Mitchell at the dinner table?  Check.  A teenage boy making the idiotic decision to rummage through his parents' bedroom for some pot to smoke and instead finds sex toys and porn?  And then he decides to watch the porn?  Great job, kid, you're scarred for life and it's your own damn fault.  Whatever the situation, it is generally pretty awkward and uncomfortable.  And how does a progressive gay couple give their son the most redneck name in the world?  Laser?  Seriously?  Ten bucks says his middle name is "Tag."

The acting is the film's strong point.  Mark Ruffalo can play a believable California stoner in his sleep and, while this part was kind of a retread for him, this reminded me that he can actually be a pretty endearing actor to watch.  Julianne Moore was also good as the similarly unfocused Jules; I thought she captured the confusion of love and passion well.  I was expecting a little more from Annette Bening, given all the accolades she has gotten for this movie.  She was fine as the uptight parent and the condescending lover, but I didn't see this part as anything spectacular.  All three gave subdued, realistic performances.  Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson were good too, but neither really has a moment where they really shine as performers.

I am beyond thankful that this movie treated Jules and Nic as a couple and not a gay couple.  There were no speeches about how theirs might be a different kind of family, but a family nonetheless.  There was no homophobia in the movie.  The kids are, indeed, mostly all right.  The cliche Lifetime movie plots are nowhere to be found in this film.

So, what are we left with?  This is a movie about a couple that has hit a rocky patch in their relationship.  Unfortunately, I didn't buy Nic and Jules as a couple.  I get it, they're not at their most lovey-dovey right now, and opposites attract and all that, but I didn't see much chemistry between the lead actresses.  Individually, their performances were fine, but together I was unimpressed.  I feel like a jerk suggesting this, but I think the most noteworthy thing about this movie is that it treated homosexual characters like people, instead of as stereotypes.  As such, this movie seems more timely than actually good to me.  I wanted to like this movie more, but Nic was an unappreciative bitch and Jules chose to rebel in the least convenient way possible.  I sympathize with their situation, but without seeing more of what makes them supposedly work as a couple, I was never invested in seeing them save their marriage.  And that means that this story never quite fulfilled the promise that its acting made.

 ***UPDATE 2/24/11***

After I posted this, I realized that I had forgotten to mention the conclusion of the story.  One of the strengths of this movie is its realism.  Even if you don't care about the characters (like me), the story itself is very believable --- and that's nice to see, coming from a concept that could have been a Farrelly Brothers movie (just a guess at their title: Sperm Daddy).  Yes, the conclusion to Paul's part in the story was pretty low-key, but it felt right.  The same goes for end of Jules and Nic's story.  Some questions are left unanswered, sure, but that's okay in a movie that is trying to feel like real life.  Now, if only they had convinced me that Nic and Jules were a good couple, and this movie would have been pretty good.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Well, it's just about Valentine's Day again. I've always had trouble with the cinematic notion of what romance should be.  Romantic comedies are insulting to my intelligence (but maybe not yours, I'm not judging), and Nicholas Sparks movies are manipulative pieces of trash (I'm okay judging this one).  So, where does a moderately odd person like myself find his romantic movies?  Today, I find it in a Charlie Kaufman script.

Joel (Jim Carrey) seems to be a pretty normal guy.  Maybe he's introverted, or maybe he's just uncomfortable.  On the day before Valentine's Day, while waiting for his train to work, Joel is seized by an overwhelming urge to go to Montauk --- so he skips work and jumps on the Montauk train.  If you are unfamiliar with New York, Montauk appears to be a fairly ritzy beach town, although it is mostly deserted in the middle of February.  While spending the day there, Joel meets Clementine (Kate Winslet), an outgoing stranger with bright blue hair.  Initially overcome by shyness and shock, Joel eventually warms up to Clementine and the two really hit it off.  In fact, Joel offers her a ride home and, instead of going inside, she asks if she can go home with him --- just as soon as she grabs her toothbrush.

That's a pretty good first quasi-date, right?  Well, it's not.  Joel and Clementine have dated for the past two years, but don't remember it.  After they had a big fight, Clementine went to the Lacuna Company and underwent a procedure where they selectively erased all memories of Joel from her mind.  When Joel found out, he did the same to her memories.  Halfway through, though, Joel realizes that he made a mistake.  Sure, the mean memories leaving are no big deal, and he lets them go with a smirk.  But the happy memories, and there are so many of those, are too special not to hold on to.

Michel Gondry was, at this time, better known for directing music videos than movies.  Fair enough, the man has made some pretty awesome videos, notably for Bjork, Radiohead, and The White Stripes.  This film is way beyond anything he had ever done before.  Most of the time, when a director has music video experience, their movies have moments of visual brilliance, but they tend to misuse the actors and the script.  Not so much here.  Gondry's touch is obvious throughout the movie, from the lighting to the soft-focus camera work in the memories of Joel.  This isn't a visually interesting movie, this is a fantastic visual experience.  The camerawork is wonderful, showing the stars at their happiest and at their puffy-eyed and bleary-faced worst.  The lighting takes on a character of its own when the natural lights turn into a spotlight, hunting for Joel's memories of Clementine to destroy them.  This narrative is designed like a maze, so it is especially impressive that, except for the first jump back in Joel's memory, the movie isn't very confusing (surreal, yes; confusing, not really).  Gondry's editing and direction are to thank for this; he was able to establish visual cues (like Clementine's hair color) to let the audience know an approximate time for whatever events they are watching.

As impressive as Gondry's direction is, the bizarre screenplay from Charlie Kaufman is what stands out most.  From a purely technical standpoint, this is an impressive piece of work.  The story folds back into itself, winds around, folds into itself again and again and again, to the point where the story could just be a labyrinth --- and that still would have been a really cool movie.  What sets this story apart from Kaufman's earlier work, like Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, is that this goes beyond his normal "seriously, how do you come up with this stuff" plots and actually has an emotional core.  Joel and Clementine's relationship is  natural and believable and understated, and that's what makes it feel so true.  Sure, this could be another wacky story about opposites attracting, and some of their memories are just silly, but this is about puzzles finding their missing pieces.

The cast was really good, and I'm impressed with several of the performances.  This is my favorite dramatic Jim Carrey role, if only because he keeps his rubber face in check for almost the entire movie.  I really liked his performance; he wasn't terribly charming or witty, and he always seemed to say the wrong thing, but this was a vulnerable piece of work.  Kate Winslet was fabulous, as usual.  While I may not want to see everything she's in, Winslet has never been anything less than excellent in anything I've seen her in.  There is a tendency for female characters with loud personalities to be flighty or flaky, but her performance made her eccentric character less of a caricature and more of an impulsive friend.  The supporting cast was surprisingly good, given their limited screen time.  Kirsten Dunst, who I normally hate, was great as the love-sick young woman, and she had one of the more believable performances I've seen of a character high from the medicinal hookah (as the hep kids call it).  Mark Ruffalo was solid, although his haircut really irritated me.  Tom Wilkinson was also respectable.  Elijah Wood, though was downright creepy as the socially inept stalker of Clementine.  I was less impressed with Jane Adams and David Cross, but even their relationship had layers to it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (which takes its name from an Alexander Pope poem, FYI) is the sort of thing that we ought to see more of in movies.  This could not have worked so well in any other form of media; this is the sort of film that I finish and feel excited.  Brilliantly written, flawlessly executed, and well acted.

Somebody requested that I review this movie a while back, but I was saving it for this "holiday."  Sorry for the wait! 

Here's a clip of Michel Gondry doing what he does best: blowing my mind.

Windtalkers

Loud explosions, pyrotechnics, and bodies flying through the air come naturally to the modern war movie, even to the point that sheer devastation is no longer an effective selling point.  These movies need their own angle in order to avoid being seen as lame Saving Private Ryan copycats.  The hook for Windtalkers is the relatively unknown tale of the Navajo tribesmen that joined the army to act as code talkers in the Pacific side of World War II.  That actually sounds like an interesting premise; so many war movies go boom, while very few spend the time to think.  Sending and breaking codes sounds fairly cerebral, right?

Ooh...but John Woo directed this movie.  And he teamed up with Nicolas Cage as the lead actor and Christian Slater as an important supporting character.  So...the main character isn't Navajo, despite the hook for this movie being about the Navajo code talkers.  Great.  I will give credit where it's due; at least they didn't pull a Touch of Evil and give the lead actor an unconvincing ethnic makeover.  Well, if the story is not centering on a Navajo character, what is the story?

Joe Enders (Cage) begins the movie by holding his platoon's position on Guadalcanal at all costs, which means everyone died except him; he was injured, losing hearing in one ear, which also occasionally hurts his balance.  He recovers in a hospital, thanks in part to a nurse (Frances O'Connor) that is clearly attracted to him, despite the fact that he is played by Nic Cage in his "brooding" mode.  Enders gets a promotion and a new assignment as soon as he is well; his new assignment is to protect Ben Yahzee (Adam Beach), one of the new Navajo code talkers.  Ox Anderson (Slater) receives a similar assignment, protecting Charlie Whitehorse.  The Navajo language is an unwritten one and is almost incomprehensible, even within its own language family, which makes it especially hard for enemies to translate; these code talkers were bilingual Navajo that transmitted important messages without the risk of being understood by the enemy.  If the Japanese managed to ever understand the Navajo language, though, the American forces would be in trouble.  Therefore, both Enders and Anderson are told that they must protect the code at all costs; their code talkers must die before being taken captive by the enemy.

That's pretty much the story basics, but there's plenty of stock subplots.  You've got the predictable awkward assimilation into the unit by the Navajo.  They are seen as savages at first, but their impossibly calm demeanor and passivity earn the respect of their squadmates and their practices become more acceptable over time.  Of course, there's one guy (Noah Emmerich) in the squad that is racist; of course, his life is eventually saved by a Navajo.  There's the nervous soldier (Mark Ruffalo) and the guy with the cool weapon (Brian Van Holt).  There's the commanding officer (Peter Stormare) that needs things done, no matter the cost.  There's the inevitable split between the two parallel plot lines; you know either Anderson or Enders will eventually have to kill a Navajo to protect the code.  Who will it be, the nice Anderson, or the bad-ass Enders?

This movie should have been so much better.  Obviously, the big problem is the story.  Why make a movie about the Navajo code talkers, if they are not the main characters?  I'm not crazy about Adam Beach as an actor, but using him as the POV character would have been much better.  Instead, we have a tortured white soldier to identify with.  Even better, it's Nicolas Cage in full-on inappropriate overacting mode.  Ignoring the poor choice of main character, this movie still has major problems.  Are you telling me that the Marines put two extremely valuable code talkers in the same squad, facing immediate danger?  There were only about two hundred of these guys in the war.  I'm pretty sure they would have been better suited for sending messages from wherever the local base was.  This movie barely even uses them for sending or receiving codes; they spend most of their time giving uncoded coordinates for air support.  That's really stupid.  What, are the Japanese (who are shown listening to the radio transmissions) going to hear their own coordinates and assume that whatever is coming their way is good?  Maybe the Americans are bringing them ice cream!  Stupid.  And how many Japanese die in this movie?  This is the Pacific war, where they were dug in and well-protected.  The Americans just run up the side of mountains, and yet I'd estimate that the dead Japanese outnumbered the dead American soldiers by a 4:1 ratio.  That is so far beyond stupid, it's insulting to stupid.

The acting is what you would expect from a John Woo movie.  It's barely there.  Nicolas Cage gets to make funny faces when he's in battle and sulk when he's not.  I'm sorry to say that he actually showed the most range in this movie.  Christian Slater, Peter Stormare, Mark Ruffalo, and Brian Van Holt were all one-dimensional caricatures of 1940s soldiers.  Noah Emmerich got to be the racist jerk that sees the error in his ways (well, he learns to accept one Navajo, anyway), but the character is so boring and predictable that you still don't care.  Adam Beach was a little better, but his character had no emotional arc, so there was nothing for him to do in this role.  Whose fault is all this?  Well, you can blame the writers, John Rice and Joe Batteer, because this story sucks, but I'm going to blame John Woo.  As the director and a producer on the film, he had ample opportunity to realize how crappy this script was and have it fixed.  He didn't, so the responsibility for this wreck belongs to him.

This movie doesn't even have the normal perks of a John Woo movie.  The action isn't good.  Woo is best known for his slow-motion, stylized action sequences, where impossible things happen and then explode.  Here, he tries to channel the destructive spirit of the Pacific war and fails.  The big battle scenes try to have a documentary feel to them (a la Saving Private Ryan), but the special effects in these scenes are far worse than any war movie released in 2002 should be.  Some of the smaller-scale battle sequences are fine, but it's not enough to make this movie watchable.

Let's see...bad story, bad acting, and bad action.  Yep.  This is a bad movie.

Shutter Island

It's difficult to write about a thriller or mystery movie because nobody wants to be That Guy who reveals that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's Keyser Soze.  This presents me with a challenge: to ramble on at length without being That Guy.  I think I can manage that, but this is a mystery movie, so it has a twist.  That's as much of a spoiler as I'm going to give you.

Adapted from Dennis Lehane's best-selling book of the same name, Shutter Island has more than a few similarities to Lehane's Mystic River.  Boy, that Lehane has a tough life; a best-selling author who gets his books optioned into movies that are directed by some of the most talented directors in the world.  You would think he'd write happier tales.  Anyway, both Mystic River and Shutter Island are mysteries that rely heavily on their characters' secrets to reach their logical conclusion.

Here, we have Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a US Marshall that volunteered for a case that would give him an excuse to poke around Shutter Island, a maximum security mental hospital for the criminally insane.  On the ferry ride to the island, Daniels meets his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), and they enter the facility together.  They are ostensibly there to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient --- not a prisoner! --- that managed to escape the facility, despite a locked door, barred windows, no shoes, rugged terrain, and several guards stationed throughout the building.  That doesn't sound like an inside job at all, does it?  Rachel was incarcerated for drowning her three children.  The real reason for Daniels' visit is to learn the fate of Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas), the pyromaniac that burned down Daniels' home with his wife (Michelle Williams) inside.  Laeddis was assigned to the facility after going to jail, but his paper trail ended on Shutter Island...but no one admits to knowing him.  Once inside the facility, Daniels and Chuck meet Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), a practitioner of humane treatment for the mentally ill, and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), a member of the old-school of psychiatric treatment that prefers lobotomy over patience.

From the start of the investigation, nothing goes Daniels' way.  The facility guards refuse him entrance while armed, so he has to give up his gun.  He asks for files that are clearly commonsense ways for him to get the essential information he needs, but he is blocked by the facility's bureaucracy at every turn.  He lost his cigarettes before the boat arrived at the island, and is forced to bum smokes from his new partner.  Orderlies and nurses are sarcastic and generally less than helpful.  The patients he interviews appear coached and seem afraid when he questions them about Andrew Laeddis.  When he faces the truth that the doctors are refusing to aid his case, Daniels can't even leave the island because a hurricane is on its way.  With nothing else to do, Daniels continues his investigation.  Clearly, there is some secret that is being covered up, and he is determined to discover that truth.  He eventually meets with an old informant (Jackie Earle Haley) that is now confined in the most violent ward of the facility, who seems to confirm Daniels' greatest fear; Daniels can uncover the truth behind the island and blow the lid off the whole conspiracy, or he can find out what happened to Andrew Laeddis.  He cannot do both.  The question is what is more important to Daniels: uncovering a terrible truth for the world to see, or finding (killing?) the man responsible for the death of his wife?

Martin Scorsese's direction really stands out in this film, particularly because of Daniels' dreams.  Daniels is suffering from a string of nightmares, hallucinations and waking dreams that are reminding him of his late wife and the Dachau concentration camp that he helped liberate in World War II.  In the dream world, identities are transposed, but the emotions are not.  Memories are shown, but they are spliced with his own subconscious.  At times, the imagery is a little trippy, like when his cigarette briefly smokes in reverse.  Other times, it is sad, as when his wife becomes ash in his arms while he professes his love for her.  And yet other times are the stuff of nightmares, with Holocaust children accusing him of not doing enough to save them.  Scorsese is given free reign to use a lot of symbolism in these scenes, and he throws a lot at the viewer.  In a lot of Scorsese films, he makes good use of camera angles and general cinematography to imply moods or hint at his characters' frame of mind.  He does that in Shutter Island, as well, but he has a lot more freedom to get creative, thanks to the dream scenes.

As far as acting goes, it is all pretty much above board.  Leonardo DiCaprio is consistently good, and working so frequently with Scorsese seems to have taught him the value of subtlety and nuance.  I'm not saying that he was ever an over-actor, but there are a lot of little things he does with his character that I appreciate, from the hunched shoulders and bold stance to the frequent (but not horribly obvious) reminders of his character's tendency for migraine headaches.  DiCaprio carries this movie on his own, but there are a lot of good supporting cast members that briefly pop up.  Mark Ruffalo does a pretty good job as the junior partner and his compassion shows through consistently.  Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow both play their parts well, but what else would you expect from two respected actors?  Ted Levine has a very brief, but frightening, cameo as the facility warden.  Jackie Earle Haley appears to be having a career renaissance playing disturbed characters, and that pleasant trend continues here with some of the more curious wound makeup I have seen in a while.  Michelle Williams was impressive in her small supporting role and was used effectively.  The rest of the cast (including Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, and John Carroll Lynch) is good too, but perhaps not as attention-grabbing.

Even with good direction and good acting, a mystery movie can still be underwhelming if the mystery is no good.  I really liked the story in Shutter Island, even though I was not particularly surprised by the ending.  Normally, if I guess the ending to a mystery correctly, it bothers me a bit.  Here, though, Scorsese drops a lot of hints that flesh out the story and the characters.  While one side effect of those choices was a less than surprising answer to the mystery, it was also satisfying because the twist made sense.  You still might not guess the ending correctly (or, at least, not entirely correctly), but you won't feel as if the end came out of left field.  Since the movie spent so much time on Daniels' subconscious mind, the mystery really takes a back seat to that as the primary plot propeller.  As such, the surprise-worthiness of the ending turned out to be a lot less important than I thought it would be.

This is the sort of film that college students love to write about.  It has excellent direction with a lot of stylistic choices and meaningful symbolism and imagery.  After the movie, you can revisit scenes in your head (or just re-watch the scenes on your DVD) and pick out important details that you missed the first time through.  This is a movie that I expect to be better the second time I watch it because being fully informed of the story will allow me to understand many of the scenes from a different angle next time.  While I completely understand anyone who enjoyed the movie less because the mystery's answer was a little predictable, I thoroughly enjoyed the story, acting and the film as a whole the first time through, and look forward to a repeat viewing.  I may be a little artsy fartsy with movies sometimes, but I appreciate good craftsmanship when I see it.