Set in 1954 Shutter Island is the story of US Marshall Teddy Daniels, (Leonardo DiCaprio) who travels to a remote island of the same name off the state of Massachusetts that houses the criminally insane. Teddy is there to investigate the disappearance of an inmate who has mysteriously vanished without a trace.

Teddy shows up with a lot of baggage, he is haunted in his dreams by the death of his wife and from participating in the liberation of a concentration camp in WWII. He is teamed up with a new partner Chuck Aule(Mark Ruffalo) who has a penchant to for referring to Teddy as Boss. Together the pair meets Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley) who runs the Hospital and believes that there are other ways to heal the mentally ill besides Lobotomies and Drugs while his head Doctor, Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow) believes in those more conventional methods.

Teddy believes that there is more going on than anyone is willing to tell. With a hurricane approaching the island and no way to leave, Teddy searches for the truth of whether the island is strictly a hospital or if there is far more sinister work being done.

DiCaprio (in his 4th teaming with Scorsese) is excellent as usual with Teddy slowly building up agitation amongst the stories many twists and turns. The atmosphere of the film is fantastic harkening back to the era when Hitchcock was king.

The film is one that requires a lot out of the ending to make the story work especially given the lengthy amount of dialog and the two hour and eighteen minute running time; although you can see the ending coming a mile away it is the final twist that makes it worthwhile and elevates it, without this Shutter Island would just be an interesting moody ride.

The biggest problem with Shutter Island is the Scorsese pedigree it is forced to live up to. For some reason more than any other director, every film Marty puts out is over scrutinized and compared to his classic works. The people that don’t like this film are going to site his other films and say this doesn’t compare rather than strictly judge this film on its own merits. Grade-86

Homicide Detective Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) investigates the murder of his daughter Emma Craven (Bojana Novakovic) who is involved in a corporate cover up and the death of three Activists.

Thomas Craven watches his daughter get killed in front of him, initially thinking he was the target he soon learns he was wrong and his daughter was in a situation at work that caused her to be the original target all along. Craven investigates her death to find out what sinister plot his daughter accidentally got herself involved in, he vows get to the bottom of it at any cost after all he is the guy with “nothing to lose”.

Mid investigation Craven meets Jedburgh (Ray Winstone) who is the guy hired by Northmoor to clean up the mess. Although Jedburgh is a cold hearted killer he feels sympathy for Craven having lost his only daughter, later we find out there is some mystery illness he has that is causing him to not get in the way of Craven and minimally help him out.

With Grandiose aspirations of creating an elaborate and complex plot that revolves around an R&D company named Northmoor secretly creating military weapons. Edge of darkness really is a much simpler story involving a father who loses the only person in his life and a straightforward cover up involving only a handful of people.

Sadly the entire movie is convoluted, one of the biggest problems is that Northmoor is not a scary company there is not enough information provided to lead you to believe that they are menacing and we never learn how glorified intern Emma was even able to come across the info that has put her life in peril.

I had multiple issues with Edge of Darkness most notably the examples listed below.

With one of the stupidest plot points in recent memory, Emma has come in contact with radiation poisoning, even though everyone knows Emma is poisoned a hit is put on her where she is killed by a shotgun, most of her torso is blown away but Thomas Craven(who was standing next to her) is miraculously not even slightly injured. Later, Thomas drinks milk that was poisoned with radiation as well, rather than let him die the Northmoor flunkies feel the need to capture him. Apparently the cool thing to do is go through the trouble of giving someone radiation poisoning, not to kill them without linking them to you but really just to soften them up, and make them a lesser advisory so you can bring them to the basement of your company.

One of the most absurd scenes is where Craven, like an old west gunslinger shoots at a car that is driving right at him, after shooting the driver side windshield multiple times the driver decides not to swerve out of the way and instead plays a futile game of chicken with rogue cop craven(Has nobody learned that when Mel Gibson is a cop who goes Rogue, you don’t stand in his way?), not surprisingly the driver is finally shot which makes him swerve at the last minute just narrowly missing Craven and ending up driving into a lake. This realism is at the center of every scene.

Both Craven and the Shadowy Northmoor Bad guys in there black SUV have multiple opportunities to kill each other but rather than just end it, a lame game of Cat and Mouse is played for no other purpose than to extend the running time. The climax of the film involves a sick radiation poisoned craven entering the home of the head of Northmoor Jack Bennett (Danny Huston) so he can have a shootout with the henchman and put an end to this nonsense. After coming into contact with Craven Jack runs to his kitchen to get his anti radiation pills, a staple of all households (I keep mine between the vitamin C and the Aspirin) but at this point Riggs Craven is in full rogue cop mode and we know it’s not going to help. Interestingly enough Craven doesn’t take any of the pills and when he gets sent to the hospital he isn’t given any of this mystery prescription either.

There is a small chance that edge of darkness could have been good but how that would be possible is beyond me.Grade-68