Oh man this movie sucks. I am a big fan of Scorsese movies and regard him as one of the great masters of cinema so you can forgive these kind of missteps. This movie was simply a very boring thriller that could have been directed by almost anyone. Leo had a few full-emote scenes where he could cry and carry on but it didn't save the movie at all.
The worst part is that you can see the twist at the end about 10 minutes into the movie and when it was revealed I was hoping through the last 1/3rd to be wrong. Maybe Scorsese could pull out some interesting twist at the end that made slogging through so much drek beforehand worthwhile. Instead I was like "yup that is exactly how I thought it would end and I hope his HBO series Boardwalk Empire doesn't suck like this."
The plot is pretty much about two Marshalls who come to an Arkham Asylum like island in the middle of Boston Harbor to find a missing girl. They are introduced to Ben Kingsley who plays the head of the prison and they investigate what happened to the woman. In the meantime there is a storm and assorted strange goings on the island. The goings on are not very interesting or suspenseful only tedious and boring.
The basis of Leo coming to the island is that he is looking for the guy who killed his wife who might be on the island. Mark Ruffalo is strait-up wasted as Leo's partner. I mean that role could have been played by a name picked randomly out of the IMDB database since they didn't let him do very much at all. Ruffalo is a great actor so they should have done more with his character. Also like I mentioned before there was a twist ending but it was so obvious that you could spot it hours before it was revealed.
All in all I don't think Scorsese should do another thriller without seriously thinking about pacing such a movie. What makes a good thriller are the starts and stops between the action and the pauses for the audience to catch their breath. You can't have too long a pause or people start looking at their watches (like I did several times during the movie.) In any case I am hoping that Boardwalk Empire is a much better series and look forward to the next Scorsese picture.
