MikePadgett.com

The Aviator

— Like the 1920s lifestyle - expensive but frequently soulless.”

• Director: Martin Scorsese
• United States, 2004
• 

The Aviator is not your typical Scorsese movie. As we open on a young Howard Hughes shooting his famously expensive Hell’s Angels, it’s hard to miss the fact that this biopic can’t have been cheap either.

The range of the movie is wide like Hughes’ flying feats. It covers his fascination for aviation of course, but also something of the mental illness from which he suffered in the later part of his life.

Leonardo Di Caprio effectively handles the trajectory of the Hughes character arc, with reasonably good support from Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale and John C. Reilly. Alan Alda’s performance as Sen Brewster is particulary noteworthy. All in all a solid movie, unusually shot with bright, blue filtered light, but in the end rather too much Hollywood gloss prevents us from penetrating the darker tones of the subject’s life.