Scorsese Goes Gothic in Shattering Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese has crafted a gripping '50s-era thrill ride in Shutter Island, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo as federal marshals probing a disappearance at a hospital for the criminally insane, say critics.

• The movie is a "nerve-twisting, tension-jammed exercise in pure paranoia—and possibly Scorsese's most commercial film yet," writes Kirk Honeycutt at the Hollywood Reporter.

• Shutter Island is "basically a potboiler genre film, a B-movie with big talent attached," Bill Goodykoontz writes at the Arizona Republic, but Scorsese's "care, love and astounding skill" give it staying power.
• DiCaprio turns in his "most haunting and emotionally complex performance yet" as Scorsese "holds us in a vise-like grip," writes Peter Travers in Rolling Stone.
• The movie has plenty of flaws, including too many meandering flashbacks, but it's "worth seeing for the palpably nightmarish and gothic world conceived by Scorsese," writes Claudia Puig at USA Today.

(More Shutter Island reviews stories.)