not enough entertaining

Rating: 6/10 (30 June 2005)

Set in the Hollywood Golden Era, this is an excellent and lavish biopic on Howard Hughes, one of 20th century most charismatic and influential figures. Nevertheless, despite its being an energetic and evocative job of recreating atmospheres of the 30's and 40's, I find it's quite disappointing on the whole. The 2 hours and 46 minutes runtime is very, very long, too long. So, though interesting for being a tale about a successful businessman who climb higher, higher and higher (Howard Hughes is somehow a forerunner of many nowadays tycoons), I figure "The Aviator" is neither that interesting nor able to catch the audience attention for all the entire time. Besides, Scorsese doesn't manage to get into the lead's head, unveiling men's dark side, like he did in taxi Driver for instance.