Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Movie Critic

If Martin Scorsese weren’t aware of himself as a great filmmaker, he could never have made a movie as bad as “Shutter Island.” The potential was here for some trashy fun, for a punchy, 100-minute edge-of-your-seat thriller. Instead, Scorsese tries to transform Dennis Lehane’s novel into an epic psychological investigation. He stuffs the film with heavy-handed art direction and piles on a ludicrously ominous soundtrack. The soundtrack is a constant reminder of the movie’s importance and only highlights its unimportance.

Scorsese needs to stop trying to make great movies. He should just try to make good movies, to make them as good as he can - which is as good as anyone can - and just have faith that the gods of inspiration will come and bless the effort. Aiming for goodness, Scorsese will hit greatness. Aiming for laurels, for a film with the scale and dimension befitting a filmmaker of his stature, he just lands in vulgarity and bombast, in a zone very near self-parody.

“Shutter Island” plays for about three minutes before something goes wrong. When we first meet Leonardo DiCaprio, playing a U.S. marshal, he’s seasick on a boat heading to Shutter Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. He staggers out onto the deck, where he meets his new partner (Mark Ruffalo). The year is 1954, and everything about this simple scene between DiCaprio and Ruffalo is perfection - the clothes, the haircuts and the tough, clipped and yet fraternal interaction between two men. They seem like guys who’ve been to war, who have that in their past and see that in each other. The feeling is very 1950s.


Then - thrum, thrum! Thrum, thrum! The cellos of Robbie Robertson’s score come blasting on the soundtrack as the ferry arrives at Shutter Island. The men are there to investigate the escape of a murderer from a mental health facility, and the soundtrack is there to tell you, oh no! Oh, no! The fraught cellos, followed by the freaking-out violins, call to mind Bernard Herrmann’s scores for Alfred Hitchcock, and there are other references to Hitchcock throughout: eerily artificial-looking backgrounds, or the placement of the protagonist in the lower right of the frame to suggest his vulnerability to assault.

But overwrought Hitchcock references don’t for a second make “Shutter Island” seem like a Hitchcock film. It seems more like an M. Night Shyamalan film (”Signs,” “The Village”). And this feeling is reinforced when the two marshals begin to catch on that leaving the facility just might turn out to be harder than entering it. Enclosure and entrapment are recurring motifs for Shyamalan, and it’s a familiar feeling for his audiences, too, stuck watching his worst movies. But this is a new sensation for Scorsese fans.

Some may criticize DiCaprio’s performance as over the top, but when all is said and done, it has internal logic and consistency. The film places DiCaprio in a series of extreme situations - he has flashbacks and nightmares about liberating Dachau during World War II and of his wife (Michelle Williams), who died prematurely. No expense is spared on these flashbacks, but expense should have been spared. They are exercises in visual pyrotechnics, without impact, and they go on and on and on …

DiCaprio’s main problem in “Shutter Island” is that he’s saddled with a misbegotten screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis, whose previous credits are “Pathfinder” and “Alexander,” two bombs. Somewhere along the way, Scorsese should have noticed that this screenplay requires that DiCaprio completely switch motivations on at least three occasions. He should also have noticed that the story, as adapted by Kalogridis, has DiCaprio realize something - and then, 30 minutes later, has him realize the exact same thing. Thus, we have a half hour of screen time in which the story, essentially, stands still.

The best work Scorsese does here is with his actors. Ruffalo brings a nice, calm assurance to his role, at all times in the midcentury American spirit. As the doctors in charge of the mental hospital, Max von Sydow (hearty and implacable) and Ben Kingsley (genial but distant) suggest sinister undertones without descending into camp. There is also a memorable cameo from a lithe and feral Patricia Clarkson, as an escapee from the facility.

The quality of the scene work in “Shutter Island” shows a director of psychological insight, who gets exceptional work from his actors. If I were Martin Scorsese’s best friend, I’d say concentrate on that and eliminate the clutter. The great-director thing is a burden. Drop it. Just you, a camera and some actors. And a good script, of course. Let the rest take care of itself.

Or to put it another way: When the legend gets in the way of the artist, dump the legend.

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My take on it from what I’ve come across is there has to be a reason that a movie gets shelved for a year and a half

By KELLEY L. CARTER

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s fourth collaboration, psychological thriller “Shutter Island,” has brought in an estimated $14 million at 2,991 theaters on Friday, a major coup amid all the dustup surrounding the release’s date shuffle.

Pic is on track to be the duo’s highest grossing debut altogether, besting 2006’s “The Departed,” which collected an opening weekend total of $26.8 million.


Coming in second is Warner Bros. “Valentine’s Day,” which brought in an estimated $5.6 million at 3,665 screens, a 61% drop from last week.

Fox pics “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” and “Avatar” will likely flip-flop before the end of the weekend for the No. 3 spot.

“Percy” brought in an estimated $4 million in 3,396 theaters on Friday, while “Avatar” took in $3.9 with 2,581.

Coming in at No. 5 is Universal’s “Wolfman,” which brought in an estimated $2.9 million in 3,223 on Friday, down about 70%.

Relativity/Sony’s “Dear John” dropped an estimated 43% from last Friday, bringing in about $2.350 million in 3,062 theaters.

Coming in as Friday’s No. 7 film is Fox’s “Tooth Fairy,” which brought in an estimated $1.1 million in 2,523.

Rounding out the bottom three, are Fox Searchlight’s “Crazy Heart,” which took in an estimate of $765,000 (down only 12%) from 1,089 theaters, Liongate’s “From Paris With Love,” at an estimated $716,000 in 2,311 and Alcon/Warner Bros.’ “Edge of Darkness” with $614,000.

Shutter Island is a 2010 thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The film is based on the 2003 novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane. Production started in March 2008. Shutter Island was originally slated to be released on October 2, 2009, but Paramount pushed the release date to February 19, 2010. Paramount head executive Brad Grey blamed the recent economic downturn as the main decision behind the delayed release date.


Plot

In 1954, two U.S. marshals investigate the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane on an island in Massachusetts. They run into trouble when they are deceived by the hospital’s chief administrator, a hurricane hits, they uncover a series of sinister human experiments, reminiscent of Nazi human experimentation.

In the end of the movie it is revealed that “Teddy” (Leonardo DiCaprio), is actually a delusional mental patient in the hospital. He murdered his manic depressive wife after she drowned their three children. He was a mental patient at the hospital for two years, and the doctors decided to try a roleplay experiment to allow him to live out his delusional fantasy in order to come to grips with reality. The treatment plan works - and the patient is retold what has happened to him and he accepts what he did to his wife. However, in the final scene he relapses to a delusional state, and the administrator decides to lobotomize him. It is implied that he is faking his relapse so he will not have to deal with the mental anguish of his act.

Production

Feature film rights to the 2003 novel Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane were first optioned to Columbia Pictures in 2003, but the rights lapsed back to the author. The author’s representatives then sold the rights to the production company Phoenix Pictures, who hired screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis to script the novel for a film adaptation. The project was in development for a year. By October 2007, the project had developed into a co-production between the studios Columbia Pictures and Paramount Pictures. Director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who had worked together on three films, were both attracted to Shutter Island as their next collaboration. Locations in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Nova Scotia were scouted.Production began on March 6, 2008.

In order to film World War II flashback scenes of DiCaprio’s character, a former soldier, production took place in Taunton, Massachusetts. Scorsese filmed the scenes in old industrial buildings in Taunton’s Whittenton Mills Complex to replicate Dachau, a World War II concentration camp seen in flashbacks. Extras portraying the Dachau prisoners were called back to reshoot a scene in July, due to the film of one scene being damaged due to an improperly sealed film shipping container. Scenes were filmed at the old Medfield State Hospital in Medfield, Massachusetts. Originally, scenes were going to be shot at the old Worcester State Hospital, but the filming would have gone on during the demolition of the surrounding buildings, so filming was impractical. Peddocks Island was used as a setting for the story’s island and East Point, in Nahant, Massachusetts for the lighthouse scenes. Filming ended on July 2, 2008.

No original soundtrack was written for the film. Instead, Scorsese made use of his long time collaborator Robbie Robertson to create an ensemble of previously recorded material to use in the film. According to a statement on Paramount’s website: “The collection of modern classical music [on the soundtrack album] was hand-selected by Robertson, who is proud of its scope and sound. ‘This may be the most outrageous and beautiful soundtrack I’ve ever heard.’ [Robertson stated].

By John Horn

Movies can be like wine: Once uncorked, they don’t often last long on the shelf. But Hollywood history could be a lot kinder to the postponed “Shutter Island,” and the movie’s last-minute date change might actually work to the thriller’s advantage.


Just six weeks before director Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel about the criminally insane was scheduled to hit theaters last October, Paramount Pictures pulled the Leonardo DiCaprio-starring movie from its year-end lineup.

Although “Shutter Island’s” television spots hadn’t yet started running, the film’s trailer and movie theater cardboard standees had been shipped, only to be quickly altered with the new release date. The publicity campaign was well underway too: The Cold War-era movie had been featured in numerous fall preview pieces, and was turning up in early Oscar prediction stories.

The nearly five-month stay was prompted by a number of financial reasons and knocked “Shutter Island” out of the current Academy Awards race. Though such postponements can be calamitous — Universal changed the release date for “The Wolfman” three times, and the troubled remake opened to middling reviews and ticket sales last weekend — the delay for the far more critically acclaimed “Shutter Island” now looks propitious, and could deliver the biggest opening weekend in Scorsese and DiCaprio’s careers: likely in the mid-$30-million range, and possibly as much as $40 million.

“If you have a bad movie, and you delay it, they pounce on you,” says one of the film’s producers, Mike Medavoy. “But if you have a good movie, and you delay it, you can get over it.”

It’s worked before

Some incredibly successful films — “Titanic,” “Star Trek” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” being a few good examples — were postponed from their initial premiere dates for various reasons and scarcely suffered.

Paramount is hoping that in moving “Shutter Island” to a release date close to 1991’s “The Silence of the Lambs” premiere (which hit theaters Feb. 14, because Valentine’s Day and cannibalism are such perfect partners), it can duplicate that film’s commercial and critical appeal. (It’s not the only tie to Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar winner: Ted Levine, who played the serial killer Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs,” has a memorable small role in “Shutter Island.”)

Audience tracking surveys show that the $75-million “Shutter Island” is generating strong “definite interest” — 40% and higher — from all four slices of the moviegoing population: men and women young and old alike. “It’s very rare that you get a movie with all four quadrants that high, especially for an R-rated movie,” says Rob Moore, Paramount’s vice chairman. “This could end up being the perfect scenario for us.”

The story follows U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels’ (DiCaprio) search for an escaped inmate — and answers to more complicated puzzles — on a remote island housing the criminally insane.

The movie was not particularly easy to get made, and passed through several incarnations, with Wolfgang Petersen (”The Perfect Storm”) once set to direct.

“The book is a descent into a state of mind,” screenwriter Laeta Kalogridis says. She says she wanted to craft a screenplay that “makes you as an audience member experience the pressure of what it feels like to descend into insanity.”

Scorsese says he was attracted by how the plot both indulged in, and then wreaked havoc with, the conventions of narrative storytelling. “Who is the narrator? What does he really know?” the director says.

DiCaprio, who is collaborating with Scorsese for the fourth time (”The Departed,” “The Aviator,” “Gangs of New York” their previous partnerships), came on board soon after. Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley and Michelle Williams round out the lead cast.

The waiting game

Paramount postponed the film’s release for several reasons, mostly related to the costs of releasing the film theatrically in the fourth quarter while not being able to collect its DVD income until 2010.

Around the same time, the studio was releasing DreamWorks’ “The Lovely Bones,” which initially looked like it might be an Oscar contender (it has but one nomination, for supporting actor Stanley Tucci). With the opening that was created in its schedule, Paramount released “Paranormal Activity,” the $15,000 thriller that grossed more than $100 million domestically

Given how strong “Shutter Island’s” early reviews have been — and that “Shutter Island” is the only new film in wide release this weekend — the movie is likely to establish new opening records for both Scorsese and DiCaprio.

The director’s previous best premiere came with 2006’s best picture winner “The Departed,” which grossed $26.9 million in its first three days. Even though DiCaprio starred in “Titanic,” his best opening was 2002’s “Catch Me if You Can,” which grossed $30.1 million.

The trickier question is whether awards voters will remember “Shutter Island” nine months from now, when studios and independent distributors typically start releasing their more cultured productions.

Scorsese says “I really don’t know” if the film’s delay will have any impact. “I go by what they really feel is important,” he says of Paramount. “And they’re behind the picture.”

john.horn@latimes.com

Will Ferrell and Ewan McGregor on Wednesday headed a Forbes.com list of Hollywood’s most overpaid stars when looking at the financial returns of their movies.

Ferrell tops the list of stars who cost more than their movies do, taking in one dollar for every $3.29 his films make. According to Forbes, “Land of the Lost” cost an estimated $US100 million to make but earned just $US65 million at box offices worldwide for movie studio Universal Pictures. The movie followed a disappointing $US43 million box office for Ferrell’s 2008 outing “Semi-Pro“, and $US128 million for “Step Brothers.”

No. 2 on the overpaid actors list is Ewan McGregor (I Love You Phillip Morris, Angels & Demons, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Amelia), who made a slew of poorly performing movies after playing Obi-Wan Kenobi four years ago in “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith.” McGregor’s films earned $3.75 per dollar he was paid.

Forbes 10 Most Overpaid Stars were:

1. Will Ferrell ($US3.29)
2. Ewan McGregor ($US3.75)
3. Billy Bob Thornton ($US4)
4. Eddie Murphy ($US4.43)
5. Ice Cube

   

   ($US4.77)

6. Tom Cruise ($US7.18)
7. Drew Barrymore ($US7.43)
8. Leonardo DiCaprio ($US7.52)
9. Samuel Jackson ($US8.59)
10. Jim Carrey ($US8.62)