Shutter Island

Psychological thrillers (1 of the movie genres I love) are hard to come by these days and when I first heard of this show and saw the trailer, I told myself I must watch it. Not to mention that Leo's in it. I think he's quite a good actor, except people usually discredit him becoz of his boyish looks. Anyway, I've waited like half a year for Shutter Island as the release was postponed from February till April and finally, I managed to catch it, albeit alone. Good thing it wasn't scary.

*WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD*

Teddy (Edward) Daniels is a decorated US Marshal who travels to "Shutter Island" to investigate the disappearance of a patient at the asylum for the criminally insane. In actual fact, he is also secretly investigating what he believe to be experiments conducted on the patients by performing operations on them to make them "dull". But things seem to get out of hand as he starts hallucinating (under the impression that he has been drugged) and he was probably "tricked" into going there. It seems that it's all a conspiracy to eventually drive him mad until...it was revealed that he was mad himself, having been undergoing treatment at Shutter Island for 2 years.
He was actually Andrew Laeddis (notice the anagram from "Edward Daniels"), a federal marshal, but was admitted after killing his wife, who had murdered their 3 children by drowning them in the lake in their backyard. He became mad as a result, and the whole "mission" he was on was actually the staff and doctors playing along with him, allowing him to play out what was going on in his mind, as a treatment to make him come to his senses, to acknowledge what he had done.

The show wasn't as tensed as I would have liked it to be, you know the "sitting at the edge of the chair" kind, but I still liked it. I found that some of the atmospheric music wasn't necessary though, as they didn't really lead to anything, especially the part when he was driven to the gates. Having heard that the twist/ending wasn't good, I predicted that he was actually mad himself. However, the 'treatment' was something different and the final ending was also not as expected in the way it came through (you would think it ended with him discovering he was the one mad), but it was an unexpected, expected ending, though a rather sad one...

He sits on the steps facing the part and begins talking as if he's back in his mission. Then, after his doctor signals that the treatment has failed, he remarks: 

"...this place makes me wonder...Which is worse, to live like a monster or die as a good man" 

and is led away to be operated on.

He made a choice.

There is a slight play of the mind as one tries to differentiate what's real or not, and if reality is always better.
Would you know if you're mad? Would you rather stay mad?
I like movies that make me think. I will safely rate this at 4 out of 5.