The Aviator Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)January 3rd, 2005
THE AVIATOR
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2005 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2
After his fascinating failure two Christmas's ago, THE GANGS OF NEW YORK, Martin Scorsese is back again this holiday season with a marvelously entertaining picture that is easily the best of this year's host of high profile biopics. THE AVIATOR tells all but the last act of the life of Howard Hughes, perhaps the world's most famous sufferer of an obsessive compulsive disorder. Hughes orders sweets with the precision he applies to the rivets on his airplanes, demanding that each cookie contain "ten chocolate chips -- none too close to the outside." And he specifies his drink orders, which were always the same, "milk in the bottle with the cap still on it," with the same accuracy he would in picking out the precise type of aviation fuel to be used in his planes.
In what proves to be a master stroke of casting, Leonardo DiCaprio, one of Hollywood's most consistently entertaining stars, plays Hughes, bringing the same palpable passion to the part that he did to that of the likable trickster in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. Although he'll probably be ignored again by the Academy, DiCaprio's acting is Oscar caliber. He and Scorsese together take us on a great adventure that is sure to delight audiences around the globe, reminding them how much fun going to the movies can be. The movie is appropriately writ large just like Hughes himself with everything seeming to be just a little bit bigger than life.
When we first meet Hughes, he is busy betting the ranch on one of Hollywood's first blockbusters. Mortgaging his Texas oil tool business, he spends years and almost crashes and burns making HELL'S ANGELS, which was the TITANIC -- the movie, not the ship -- of his time. It went on to make buckets of money and win critical and audience acclaim, but, as he spent literally years making it, it didn't look like he would ever be able to make anything coherent out of its twenty-five million miles of film footage. Among the more memorable moments in the HELL'S ANGELS production are an almost year long wait for clouds to appear so they could shoot the incredible aerial sequences -- Hughes discovered that you can't tell the speed of the planes without a proper backdrop -- and the remaking of the entire movie before its release so that they could do it as a "talkie." After three pilots die during the filming and the stock market crashes, the movie finally sees the light of day, and the viewers love it.
Of the many loves of Hughes's life, none was more prominent than Katharine Hepburn with whom he had a long relationship. Cate Blanchett nails Hepburn perfectly in another wonderful casting choice. Also memorable are Alan Alda, as a slimy Senator who tries to take Hughes down, and Alec Baldwin, as the rival head of Pan Am, who tries to use the government to defeat Hughes's company, TWA, rather than compete fairly.
John Logan's script is a real delight. At one point, Hughes finds himself uncomfortably among Hepburn's super rich family who brag that they are socialist supporters of President Roosevelt. When Hughes tries to speak of his accomplishments at the Hepburn dinner table, the matriarch of the clan, the elder Mrs. Hepburn (Frances Conroy), tells him, "We don't care about money here, Mr. Hughes," to which he shoots back, "That's because you have it." Look carefully in distance in that frame, and you'll see their black maid toiling away in the kitchen.
The movie ends in late 1947, soon after Hughes flies his infamous "Spruce Goose" for its one and only flight. The film ends as strangely as the man it is about. When the screen goes to solid black after almost three hours, scattered, awkward applause broke out in our packed theater since it wasn't clear if the ending had arrived or not. It had. And we had all had a lot of fun watching Hughes overcome obstacle after obstacle until his madness finally forced him into the shadows forever.
THE AVIATOR runs 2:50 but feels an hour shorter. It is rated PG-13 for "thematic elements, sexual content, nudity, language and a crash sequence" and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
The film is playing in nationwide release now in the United States. In the Silicon Valley, it is showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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