Federal Marshall Teddy Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule travel to a government-run mental institution for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, near Boston, when there is a report that one of the prisoners has gone missing. Daniels has his own reasons for wanting to get to the island and carries baggage of his own. He is still traumatized from what he saw when his army unit liberated one of the Nazi concentrating camps at the end of World War II and is still haunted by the more recent death in a fire of his wife and children. The head of the hospital, Dr. John Cawley, treats him alright but others give the agents a less than warm reception. Daniels particularly wants to find out what is going on in one of the wards, reserved for the most serious offenders. As Daniels begins to peal away the layers of deceit, it becomes obvious that not all is as it seems.

Before settling on Mark Ruffalo for the role of Chuck Aule, Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese also considered Robert Downey Jr. and Josh Brolin.

George Noyce:
This is a game. All of this is for you. You're not investigating anything. You're a fucking rat in a maze.


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Continuity: When Teddy interviews the first patient, he scrawls in his notebook to the point of tearing the paper in one shot. The paper is intact in a later shot.

Written by György Ligeti
Performed by Berlin Philharmonic
Conducted by Jonathan Nott
Courtesy of Warner Classics
By Arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing