Shutter Island--Kind of wish I hadn't known anything about it

If you haven't seen "Shutter Island" and intend to, I warn you now that while I am not going to reveal specific SPOILERS, I want to talk in general terms about the movie...and that in itself may be a SPOILER. It was for me.

For me, Martin Scorcese movies are up and down in quality. They range from all the way up to Awesome Classics down to merely Really, Really Good. For me, "Shutter Island" is just Really, Really Good, but it may even slide down to just Really Good. I suspect that a big part of this stunning letdown is my own expectations--not just my expectations that the movie would rock, but my expectations that there would be some kind of big twist central to the story.

Why did I have that expectation? Very simple: Everything I read about the film indicated there was a big twist central to the story. I quickly stopped reading about "Shutter Island," but it was no use. Once the idea was in my head, it was in there, and I couldn't sit through the actual movie without thinking about it the whole time.

I respect movie critics and other writers for not revealing that central twist, but telling us there IS such a twist is often tantamount to a spoiler itself. While I watched "Shutter Island," I kept trying to anticipate the twist, analyzing what was "really going on" instead of getting wrapped up in the story.

Now, my wife blurted out what the deal was early on, and I agreed with her, so, yeah, the twist wound up being no big deal. You'd think that having figured out the movie's gimmick, I would be free to sit back and enjoy the craft of the film without getting hung up on the particulars of the plot. Well, you would be wrong. I didn't know until the end that what we saw was "it." I kept wondering if something else twisty would happen, and at the end I almost felt a letdown. This is not Scorcese's fault, nor the screenwriters, nor star Leonardo DiCaprio. Well, maybe it IS DiCaprio's fault. Don't ask me how it is his fault, but I feel like blaming him for something because I just really wish Marty would find a new leading man sometime soon.

"Shutter Island" is well made, tense, and entertaining. But it kind of feels like a disappointment, and I find it isn't sticking with me at all. I imagine a second viewing would take care of the plot issues, but I don't have any desire to see it again right now. The problem is, I don't know how much of this reaction is due to the movie itself and how much is due to my own stupid self-psych out based on what I knew about it before seeing it.