Everyone’s talking about it. Shutter Island is thrilling audiences across the country. Leonardo DiCaprio turns in an amazing performance as US Marshal Teddy Daniels who has been sent to remote Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a female inmate convicted of murder that escaped from the facility’s hospital for the criminally insane. We talked with Leo about the movie, and he told us what he really thinks of his pal, director Martin Scorsese.

Tell us about Shutter Island.
There’s a missing patient, and everyone’s looking for her because she couldn’t possibly escape from this island when you look at the way it’s fortified and the fact that she would have to swim miles and miles to shore in rough terrain and go through thick, dense forests and climb down jagged rocks. This frail woman has disappeared from this island, and it seems like there’s some sort of conspiracy going on with all the doctors and administration and Teddy and his partner are there to uncover what’s really happened and certainly the more they talk to people and find out information, the more things become suspicious to them and rightfully so.

What did you find most appealing about your character in the movie?
I think here you have a character that’s put into a situation where there’s a lot more to his journey than there appears to be at first, but Teddy is fiercely dedicated to finding the missing person on this island. You also come to realize that he’s got his own secret agenda there, which is to find the killer of his wife. It turns into a real psychological thriller after that, and you really have no idea or basis of where your feet should stand in this film. That’s one of the great things about the movie; it’s constantly jarring you.

The location was also a big factor in creating the mood of the film. Where did you all shoot, and how much of it was specifically designed for the film?
We shot in Massachusetts in Medfield in what I gather to have been an old mental institution. A lot of it was there. A lot of it had been abandoned; so, there were these twisted vines in certain sections and these homes that had been engulfed by nature, but there were also these giant, fortified brick buildings and these walls surrounding all of it that really gave it a natural feeling towards the environment that we were trying to portray. It was amazing to know that there were locations like that, and I think there was a certain haunting element to it in that we were telling these stories of a mental institution and we were in an old one.

The movie is rated R for disturbing violent content, language and some nudity. For all of this week’s new movies, check out my show Reel Critics on Time Warner Cable Video on Demand under the North Texas programming tab.