Well, the film tips you off as to what is going on several times. The film opens with Teddy alone in the bathroom obviously not well and then when he finally comes out he does not know his partner. This opens the door to setting us (the audience) up because are we to believe he's been in the bathroom from the moment he got on the boat and now almost to the island he finally comes out and meets his partner? Another huge tell at the beginning of the film is when they are entering the gate to the hospital grounds for the first time and they are asked to surrender their weapons and Chuck (Mark Ruffalo) can't get his gun out of the holster. This told us right away "Chuck" was not who he claimed to be. So, only minutes into the film we have been given some big clues. I didn't mind the big clues and giant symbols because I thought Scorsese was doing all this with a great deal of style. It was fun and made me feel like I was going to have a good ride with this film.

As far as Teddy's motivation for blowing up the car, his goal was to enter the lighthouse and so blowing up the car was to draw as many people away from the lighthouse area as he could.

The rats were symbolic and so if you want to believe they were real or hallucinatory is up to you. I would say there is no "correct" answer to that and I prefer films that give you that kind of leeway. That's one thing I really enjoyed about Shutter Island and The Ghost Writer, they were fun films made for grown-ups with no real thought to pleasing a teenage audience. Well unless you want to count having Leo DiCaprio play a grizzled WWII vet, I mean he can certainly act but he always looks like a teenager. He is not who I would have picked to play Teddy but it did not hurt the film for me.

I am kind of tired of the boy-men that Hollywood seems to have such an affinity for though, I mean how about some guys that look like guys for a change.