The Life, Loves And Lunacy Of Howard Hughes

Rating: 7/10 (1 January 2006)

In what is surely his finest performance since "Titanic," Leonardo DiCaprio manages to pull off a brilliant portrayal of the early years of the eccentric (and insane) multi-millionaire Howard Hughes. The first part of the movie deals with the filming and production of "Hell's Angels" - Hughes' motion picture about World War I aviators, and it served as an appropriate introduction to a movie that revolved around (as the title suggests) Hughes' fascination with aviation.
DiCaprio is brilliant as he portrays Hughes' gradual descent into insanity. At first, as the movie opens, Hughes displays mild eccentricities (we would probably say today that he suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder.) DiCaprio manages to subtly show us Hughes becoming worse and worse until eventually he loses all touch with reality, managing to return to normalcy for a monumental battle with a Senate Committee over his airline's desire to begin transcontinental flights. Alan Alda was quite good in his role as Senator Brewster, the chair of the Committee, and someone in the pocket of the head of Pan Am Airlines (played by Alec Baldwin.) The depiction of the Senate hearing was brilliant, and left no doubt that Brewster - knowing of Hughes' fragile mental state - was an utterly beaten man, obviously taken completely off guard by a totally in control Hughes.
The film depicts Hughes' various romances, focusing especially on those with Katherine Hepburn (Kate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), which served as an opportunity to show Hughes' growing paranoia. The last scene of the movie is particularly haunting to anyone who knows how Hughes' life turned out. The relationship with Gardner (and the role she played in getting him on his feet before the Senate Committee hearings) was especially interesting.
I enjoyed the movie very much, although it seemed that it dragged a bit in places. Perhaps at times it became a bit too concerned with details (not unlike Hughes himself, actually) and, if we were going to get an almost 3 hour movie about Hughes, it might have been more satisfying to have less detail about these particular years and extend the movie into Hughes' later years. Perhaps fodder for a sequel. Having said that, this is a very good and very interesting movie, which I rate as a 7/10.