Shutter Island (2010) is a psychological thriller directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley, Michelle Williams, and Max von Sydow. Released by Paramount Pictures, the film is adapted from Dennis Lehane's 2003 novel of the same name, and based on a screenplay by Laeta Kalogridis. After Columbia Pictures allowed their rights to the novel expire, Kalogridis developed the project with the production company Phoenix Pictures, which attracted Scorsese and DiCaprio's interest in 2008.
Scorsese and DiCaprio had collaborated four years previously on the set of The Departed, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Scorsese once again features the actor in Shutter Island's leading role. Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, and John Carroll Lynch round out the supporting cast of character actors assembled to portray the sinister and deranged residents of Ashecliffe. Unlike The Departed—a gritty, naturalistic crime drama set in inner-city Boston—Shutter Island luxuriates in Hitchcockian melodrama and horror, a style Scorsese had previously explored in Cape Fear (1991).
Although the film divided critics, Shutter Island was a resounding box office success, grossing nearly $300 million worldwide. In The New York Times, A.O. Scott critiqued the film for failing to deliver "gripping, sustained suspense." In his review, Roger Ebert praised the way the unfolding plot of the film creates a "disturbing foreshadow" through a "primary effect... on the senses." Critics noted the way Scorsese pays homage to the postwar work of directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Samuel Fuller, in particular Fuller's Shock Corridor (1963), a psychological drama about a journalist who enters a mental hospital in order to solve a murder.
The film premiered at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival and was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the ten best films of 2010. Rather than hire a composer to score the film, Scorsese's collaborator Robbie Robertson used a range of modern classical music by composers such as Gustav Mahler, Gyorgy Ligeti, John Cage, and John Adams. The film's soundtrack was released by Rhino Records on February 2nd, 2010.
