Shallow as the sea in low tide.

Rating: 5/10 (25 February 2005)

Minor spoilers.
I will start with the only ray of light in this picture - Cate Blanchett. Her portrayal of Katharine Hepburn was simply immaculate, providing the so much needed depth and insight to this movie.
The rest is darkness. The Aviator is storytelling at it's worst. Covering 20 years of Howard Hughes' life the movie is actually more of a biographic encyclopedia entry rather than anything else. We simply follow the main character from one point in time to another ("Two years later...", "One hour later..."), from one project to another, as the movie lists his accomplishments and sometimes mentions his failures. The overall impression is that of a series of publicity shots, arranged to portray one of the most controversial figures in American history as the perfect American, living "The Great American Dream". The only fault that Howard Hughes appears to have is his compulsive behaviour disorder, and even that is attributed to his mother's dominating and apparently sick parenthood.
The movie is incredibly long, and yet three hours later we still don't know who Howard Hughes really was and what drove him (besides his love for airplanes of cause). We learn in the most "matter of fact" manner that 3 pilots were killed during the shooting of "Hell's Angels", but we never get to see how Hughes dealt with this fact on any level, personal or organizational. We see and hear of scores of women who entered his life and left a bit later, but they are just passing names to us. We see him hire an underage girl for "private services" but do not know why he did it. The list can go on forever.
Everything is made as simple as possible. Pan Am - bad, TWA - good. Mother - bad, Howard Hughes - good. Even the physical appearance of the main characters doesn't change - even though 20 years pass within the storyline, they all still look the same, including the hairstyles. Such a simplified portrayal of Howard Hughes and his times is an insult not only to the man himself, but to the viewer.
So shallow was the movie, that even though we are introduced to Hughes' character in 1927 and leave him around 1947, the Second World War is not mentioned till approximately 1946, with the tiny exception of the Hercules project specifications. And just as the shallow and self-obsessed Hollywood, portrayed by Scorsese, failed to notice the war, so did Scorsese's picture.
If you feel like watching a three hour long issue of E!-channel retro issue of a celebrity watch program - this one is for you. If you don't - just read the "Hughes, Howard Robard Hughes Jr. (1905-1976)" entry in your encyclopedia.
5 out of ten just for the breath of fresh air called Cate Blanchett.