Movie Review of "Shutter Island"

*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT*

"Shutter Island," directed by Martin Scorsese, is another brain teaser and sure hit, but how can you go wrong with Leonardo DiCaprio as the leading man? As a forewarning, I am a huge Scorsese and DiCaprio fan. If you are not a fan, be ready to disagree this whole entire post.

First of all, this is the PERFECT movie for English majors. The plot of the movie begs to be explicated and analyzed. (Plus, it makes you feel extra smart when you figure out what's going on before your friends.) It's filled with unreliable narrators, "bad readers," symbols, metaphors, and motifs. Every detail contributes to the story and means something more than the obvious. The movie is a great discussion starter, never lacking material to talk about to keep the discussion going. Scorsese never disappoints in his endings. He leaves the audience with a perfect one-liner, poetic and witty, which keeps the audience thinking even after the movie has ended.

The one issue I had with the movie is the ending was predictable, at least to me. My two roommates were totally shocked by the ending, but I always saw it as a possibility. It really reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe's twisted tale, "The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether," using some of the same plot twists. I think Scorsese is a secret Poe fan, which makes me like him even more, sharing the same appreciation for the Gothic and the grotesque.

All in all, I really enjoyed this film. It was no "The Departed," my second favorite movie of all time (only second to "Goodfellas") but there are two separate shower scenes with Leo DiCaprio, shirtless, so how can you really go wrong? I'd probably go as far to say I'd even pay the $7 to see it in theaters again.