It's garbage. And here's why.
The Acting? Excellent.
The Film work? Amazing.
Imagery? Fan***tastic
Hell the dialogue: Superb.
What makes this movie so bad then you might be asking?
Plot/Story. These are in the toilet. I went to see this movie because of the previews and because frankly DiCaprio won me over with the Aviator. I've since watched almost every other movie he's been in because he's a right picky bastard with the movies he puts himself in. He's a great actor and he doesn't typically pick stinkers put these two things together and you are likely going to get a good combination.
I'll go ahead and ruin the entire experience for you. No it's not really a conspiracy, no it's not really a mind ****. He's crazy. I figured all of that out in the first hour and had niggling suspicions from the start. Things just weren't matching up with how logic really works from the beginning. At least for me, they were pushing "he's crazy" from start to finish well before the Dream Sequence (which was entirely too long). It was at this point I started thinking. "Please don't do this movie. Please don't do this. Really Mind Screw me. Don't think Mind Screw = not being what the trailer shows please I beg of you"
The movie start to finish tells you pretty much "yeah he's crazy" And I figured his entire time on the island was either a Hallucination and we'd pan out to him being in a cell at the end, or that it was some kind of cutting edge psychologly tool. This was the theory I had pieced together around 45 minutes in. At an hour any niggling doubt that I had about how it was going to end had vanished entirely during the Dream Sequence.
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I'm sure this movie was trying to Mind Screw you but it fails miserably at it, because I already had figured it out. Do you know what would have really been a Mind ****? If when he went to the Lighthouse that he turned out to be RIGHT. (while being bat **** crazy)
So he goes to the Lighthouse at the end where supposedly all of the Lobotomy and mind control experiments are being done. Of course he finds nothing. Infact the place is empty for every room save the room at the top which has the desk and the lead psychologist behind it. He explains that it was all a Roleplay Technique to try and get Andrew Laaedis (sp?) to have a Breakthrough. Teddy doesn't exist and was a ficticious character made up by Andrew so he wouldn't have to cope with having shot his wife after she drowned their children. And that every character he'd been hunting down had been was an anagram for himself save for his daughter which he altered the name of and created a new character for.
So he goes to the Lighthouse at the end where supposedly all of the Lobotomy and mind control experiments are being done. Of course he finds nothing. Infact the place is empty for every room save the room at the top which has the desk and the lead psychologist behind it. He explains that it was all a Roleplay Technique to try and get Andrew Laaedis (sp?) to have a Breakthrough. Teddy doesn't exist and was a ficticious character made up by Andrew so he wouldn't have to cope with having shot his wife after she drowned their children. And that every character he'd been hunting down had been was an anagram for himself save for his daughter which he altered the name of and created a new character for.
What a waste.
Is it me or does anyone else find that more and more trailers are going too far and spoiling films now? It really struck me with The Sixth Sense. I kept hearing about the big "surprise" at the end. I was incredibly disappointed to find out the the "surprise" was the Willis was a ghost. I though that was pretty damned obvious in the trailers?
I have this irrational hatred of Leo. I can't explain it. Maybe it was all cuz of that terrible new take on Romeo and Juliet he did with the masterful John Leguizamo. Possibly it was cuz I thought Titanic was a Titanic bore. I dunno. I did thoroughly enjoy his work in What's Eating Gilbert Grape and The Departed, though. Still, I can't get past this hatred of him. Anyhoo, that was just a kicker when I decided I didn't want to see this movie. It just didn't look all that great for some reason. Oh well, it's nice to know that I likely made the right decision - especially since it was made, in part, due to an irrational hatred of a person I'll never even meet.
You need to watch Body of Lies Zb. You'd like that movie alot (he's in it. But it's really good)
Really? Uggh. I was hoping the "he's really a crazy patient" thing that was so blatantly obvious in trailers wasn't actually the case. Damn.
Is it me or does anyone else find that more and more trailers are going too far and spoiling films now? It really struck me with The Sixth Sense. I kept hearing about the big "surprise" at the end. I was incredibly disappointed to find out the the "surprise" was the Willis was a ghost. I though that was pretty damned obvious in the trailers?
Heh, well in the trailers with this movie they are trying to play up as if it were some Conspiracy..and they did a semi decent job of playing that up. (at least the trailers I saw for it) If anything I would have wanted the movie to actually play out like the trailers I saw.
As I watched the trailers, I began to get a "Jacob's Ladder" (the 1990 movie) vibe about the thing - that most of the story of the movie was going to be a trick.
I loved that flick. Used to have a poster of it on my wall back in the day. It's one of the few where the twist ending actually caught me off guard.
I'll go ahead and ruin the entire experience for you. No it's not really a conspiracy, no it's not really a mind ****. He's crazy.
I think that anybody who didn't already know this from the previews needs to watch more movies. The twist was totally obvious, but honestly, I still liked the movie, and I think that the reason that I liked the movie was because the people making it knew that the twist was obvious, so they didn't really make it that big a deal and instead concentrated on making the rest of the movie really awesome despite everybody already knowing what the end was going to be. It was the journey towards the ending that was important here, not the ending itself. I think that focusing on how obvious the twist was when that totally wasn't the point is sort of silly, and in that case, I don't even know why bother calling it a twist to begin with when it was just an ending, and a rather good one at that, given that very interesting ending line by Mr. DiCaprio.
I think that you didn't like the movie because you were holding it to certain standards that it wasn't trying to live up to and it didn't ever pretend that it was trying to live up to. You fabricated this completely off-base expectation for the movie in your own mind and then were disappointed when it turns out not to be true. Sounds like you're the one here that a little bit crazy. ^_~
I think that anybody who didn't already know this from the previews needs to watch more movies. The twist was totally obvious, but honestly, I still liked the movie, and I think that the reason that I liked the movie was because the people making it knew that the twist was obvious, so they didn't really make it that big a deal and instead concentrated on making the rest of the movie really awesome despite everybody already knowing what the end was going to be. It was the journey towards the ending that was important here, not the ending itself. I think that focusing on how obvious the twist was when that totally wasn't the point is sort of silly, and in that case, I don't even know why bother calling it a twist to begin with when it was just an ending.
I think that you didn't like the movie because you were holding it to certain standards that it wasn't trying to live up to and it didn't ever pretend that it was trying to live up to. You fabricated this completely off-base expectation for the movie in your own mind and then were disappointed when it turns out not to be true. Sounds like you're the one here that a little bit crazy. ^_~
Then in that case I shouldn't have been able to plot out the journey point for point either. The acting was amazing, but when you already not only know the outcome but also figured out pretty much how they are going to get to it, it sucks the fun out of it.
It was an excusion in Might as well not have seen it for me. Something that -would- have been exciting would have been him being right.
And you're just now figuring out I'm a little bit crazy? :-p
As I watched the trailers, I began to get a "Jacob's Ladder" (the 1990 movie) vibe about the thing - that most of the story of the movie was going to be a trick.
I loved that flick. Used to have a poster of it on my wall back in the day. It's one of the few where the twist ending actually caught me off guard.
I've never heard of the movie Jacob's Ladder. I did have a toy Jacob's Ladder in my room as a teenager though.
As for Shutter Island, the trailers didn't strike me as it being a good movie. I always assumed that most of us are good judges of what we like and don't like. I have never had the experience of wanting to walk out on a movie that I've decided myself to see. There have certainly been things I've disliked about movies I've chosen. The most recent example is the soulless rendition of Ghost Riders In The Sky in Ghost Rider. Johnny Cash did it with so much more heart and passion that they would have been better off just using his version.
And here I was hoping the twist was that it was really a peninsula.
Subtle Simpsons references FTW. :D