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jeff_v [ 8.0 ]
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Two and a half hours gerrymandered to make Howard Hughes' life as weirdly triumphant as possible, The Aviator is a surprising success. DiCaprio is well-cast this time, and more than holds his own onscreen. The film is never less than eye-popping, but I'm not sure if it ever achieves its portrayal of Hughes as the archetypical modern man, heroic, tragic and ridiculous.
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Dancing_P [ 9.0 ]
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At first glance, this doesn't really seem like the kind of movie Martin Scorsese would do. The story of a rich, famous guy who made a bunch of movies, built some of the most revolutionary airplanes ever and dated some of the most beautiful actresses in Hollywood; that's as far as you can get from Taxi Driver... or so you'd think. For all of his glamorous acheivements, Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is every bit as lonely as any Scorsese character. Scorsese has succeeded in creating a biopic that is both entertaining and thought-provoking and avoids simply skimming the surface. The film opens on the set of Hughes' expensive war epic Hell's Angels, where Hughes was such a perfectionist he and his assitant Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) hire a UCLA meterologist (Ian Holm) to ''find him some clouds''. We follow him through his love affair with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), his acquisition of TWA, his competition with Pan-Am owner Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), his several attempts to build the largest plane on Earth, his romance with Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), his near-fatal, crippling plane crash (one of the best scenes of the year), his time spent in germaphobic hiding in his screening room and finally his feud with senator Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda). This is by no means a complete biopic; it drops us in in the middle and exits in the same way (Hughes' later life deserves a whole other movie, so perhaps this was a smart choice). This allows Scorsese to spend less time going over the historical facts and more time developing the character. I prefer this fairly unconventional approach to a biopic than the usual cram-it-in concept; I mean, how much longer could this movie be? An homage to old-fashioned biopics (and more specifically to the King Daddy Cool of all biopics, Citizen Kane), it's pure moviemaking spectacle from top to bottom without neglecting the pyschological aspect. DiCaprio is terrific in what is probably, technically speaking, his first ''grown-up'' role. The supporting cast is equally effective (although sometimes it seems to be fishing for cameos... ''Hey kids, it's Willem Dafoe!'') with Cate Blanchettt turning in a larger-than-life performance as Katharine Hepburn. Terrific, watchable stuff that works on many levels... but that would necessitate a much longer review.
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kcremer [ 8.0 ]
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It starts out a bit sluggish, but once it picks up momentum (after about 20 minutes) it's a pretty impressive bio. DiCaprio seems to emulate Howard Hughes' obsessive-compulsive disorder accurately, as indicated in the scene where he washes his hands so vigorously that they bleed, then finds himself unable (though not physically) to hand a towel to a disabled gentleman. Also, Cate Blanchett won a well-deserved Oscar for her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn.
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babyduck [ 7.5 ]
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Good in a creepy kind of way. Howard Hughes left a great life - probably would have been better if he had his spur of greatness these days tho with the better psychiatric drugs they have now for his ... problems.
But on the other hand - would that have dulled his genius? Who knows!
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| Weighted Rating | : 7.2 |
| No. Ratings | : 21 | |
| No. Reviews | : 6 | |
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