The Aviator Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)December 16th, 2004
THE AVIATOR
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Miramax Pictures
Grade: B+
Directed by: Martin Scorsese
Written by: John Logan
Cast: Michael Mann, Sandy Climan, Graham King, Charles Evans Jr., Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Jude Law
Screened at: DGA, NYC, 11/28/04
When I was a kid in elementary school, teachers asked us the ice-breaking question at the beginning of each year. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Inevitably the answer was "policeman" or "fireman," perhaps because just as inevitably we were taken each year on a field trip to a police station and to a hook and ladder company. Nowadays, with TV and computers taking up much of the time of youngsters in school, the answer for the usual "when you grow up" question is: Rich. Few kids have realistic expectations, though Howard Hughes is a noteworthy exception. In the final scene, one which puts an end-frame on the 169-minute film, he tells his mother who is bathing him that he wants to be the richest guy in the world. Unfortunately, his mother, by urging him to watch out for diseases in the opening moments of the story, appears to cause in him a hand-washing compulsion that leads him in his adult life to scrub his fingers so much that they'd bleed before he could pick up a towel. Nor would he be comfortable shaking hands. But that's the least of his problems, since Howard Hughes, if known at all by Americans, has gone down in history more because of a psychotic break that caused him to avoid publicity and, in fact, to travel from one place to another under such cover that he became as reclusive as author J.D. Salinger.
However conventional Martin Scorsese might be in directing the biopic about Mr. Hughes, he wisely chooses key incidents (set down by scripter John Logan) in the man's life to give us new insight into what makes one of the most interesting figures of the 20th Century tick. A Renaissance man who. having early on inherited a dominant position in his deceased father's prospering tool business, he refuses to spend his life making mundane implements but instead takes great risks that threaten to bankrupt him should his grandiose ideas not pan out–as they often do not. Fascinated by Hollywood particularly at a time that sound features are coming out for the first time, Hughes directs a World War I epic in 1930 called "Hell's Angels," a slow-moving corny story that introduces the world to Jean Harlow, a movie until then unmatched for visual spectacle. His "Scarface" introduced Pul Muni to the screen while "The Outlaw" in 1941 featured Jane Russell in a role that has Hughes face a panel of motion picture censors concerned about the extensive "mammaries" of the celebrated actress.
His activities in buying the RKO Pictures Corporation are skipped over by Scorcese to give the film audience time to watch the man in action as the founder of the Hughes Aircraft Company, personally flying to set a landplane speed record of 352 miles per hour, then lowering the transcontinental flight time record to 7 hours 28 minutes. Ultimately he would work on an eight-engine, wooden flying boat intended to carry 750 passengers, piloting the machine personally in 1947 for one mile.
Key scenes in Scorsese's film at times glorify this larger-than- life figure, making us in the audience root for him when he lands in conflict with those out to crush his company (by now he had purchased TWA) and his spirit. The film is dominated by two major aspects of his adult life: 1) his affairs with Hollywood actresses Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner; 2) his fanatical energy both in coming up with ideas and trying to put them into operation.
In the role of Howard Hughes, Leonardo Di Caprio presumably hopes to pick up an Oscar trophy but which, though more than competently performed falls short of the kind of imaginative leap and sympathetic pull on the audience that can be attributed to, say, Don Cheadle as the hotel manager who saves 1,200 members of the Tutsi tribe from Hutu massacre in "Hotel Rwanda." Occasionally shown in extreme close-up, Di Caprio's Hughes comes off as a man whose eyes flash the fire of one possessed, an impatient businessman given to shake his legs impatiently when seated and, strangely enough in two instances to repeat the same words over and over at least a dozen times when he appears not to be under any particular stress. In fact the man comes off best when questioned by the chairman of U.S. Senate committee led by the senator from Maine (played winningly by the always excellent Alan Alda), speaking clearly and strongly without the aid of a lawyer in getting the spectators on his side when accused by the senator of war profiteering.
Scorsese also shows Hughes' fascination with liberated women who come off just short of being attainable. Cate Blanchett in the role of Katherine Hepburn speaks boldly to Hughes as she beats him at golf: close your eyes and listen to her voice and you'd swear that Blanchett is merely lip-synching the words of Hepburn herself. The film's best comic scene takes place in Hepburn's home where each member of her eccentric, extended family blathers on at dinner about a subject of his or her own choosing without focus. When one diner expresses the view that "we don't care about money," Hughes replies, "That's because you have it," an obvious retort but one which does not go over too well with these Connecticut aristocrats. After Hepburn dumps Hughes because she is in love with the already married Spencer Tracy, he meets his match in an even stronger-willed Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) who, insisting that she is "not for sale" refuses his offer of one of the most exotic sapphire necklaces ever made. "You can buy me dinner," sums her up, but despite her penchant for putting Hughes off, she turns up when the man needs support the most–when holed up in his home, adhesive tape setting the boundaries of almost every square inch to delineate a "germ-free zone."
"The Aviator," which also features Alec Baldwin as the dapper owner of Pan Am seeking to buy Hughes's TWA and John C. Reilly taking care of the business end, is a must-see for students and holders of Master's degrees in Business Administration and by extension for major executives everywhere. Whether it can be sold in the youth market given how young people seem to make heroes out of Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan, is an arguable point, but surely "The Aviator," which, if ever shown on airlines will surely cut a segment that finds Hughes severely injured in a graphically shown crash of his Hercules plane, is a mature, professionally made film, well cast and showing off John Logan's often crackling dialogue–an epic adventure and a solid entry into the film world for the year 2004.
Rated PG-13. 169 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten
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Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
