Movie Reviews

Martin Scorsese's The Aviator does just about as much as I could hope for in a biopic: it offered me a thorough introduction and examination of an interesting person who I'd known nothing about, and it happens to be very entertaining despite the fact that I knew nothing about him.

Leonardo DiCaprio does a really good turn as Howard Hughes, the film's namesake. He's a very energetic and charming person, likeable and easy to watch onscreen; but he's also prone to bouts of capriciousness, particularly with respect to his fortune, which he is unafraid to spend on grand experiments in areas that interest him, namely filmmaking and aviation. Perhaps one of the reasons he comes across as so likeable is, in fact, his willingness to splurge and risk millions of dollars on hobby-like projects that we could only dream about starting -- but he is not simply indulging himself with his money; I got the sense that he was certainly as hard of a worker as anyone. The Howard Hughes of The Aviator (whether he is a faithful representation of who the real Hughs was or not -- I don't know) reminded me a bit of Charles Foster Kane from Citizen Kane, who decides on a whim to buy an entire newspaper operation because he "thinks it would be fun", and then ends up turning it into the city's most widely-read daily.

Other notable parts in The Aviator include the appearance of Cate Blanchett as Katherine Hepburn, the first (and only) flight of Hughes's famous 'Spruce Goose', Hughes's acquisition of the TWA airline, his political wrangling with a competing airline (culminating in a very well-done courtroom sequence with Alan Alda as a none-too-honest senator), and finally, Hughes's bouts with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Hughes's psychosis isn't explored quite as far as it could've been (as Scorsese doesn't extend the time span of his film to include the latter part of Hughes's life when, as I understand it, he lived as a complete germ-fearing recluse), but I suppose his achievements are more film-worthy than his failing health.

I wasn't completely captivated by anything, really, in The Aviator, but I did find it to be entertaining, informative, dramatic, and all-around very well done.