Hughes in his flight for perfection

Rating: 9/10 (2 January 2005)

The Aviator delivers on what it promises: a movie about Howard Hughes and his passion for flying. This movie is based on the illustrious billionaire Hughes and his obsession to better aviation while romancing many of Hollywood's leading ladies. Hughes had a great deal of vision and a great deal of drive and many interesting ideas such as flying above the stratosphere. He also enjoyed injecting large sums of money into his privately funded projects. The sky was the limit for this guy. But the line between genius and insanity become extremely fine for this billionaire. Leonardo DiCaprio boldly portrays Hughes in the movie, from the accent to the eccentricities. Hughes many quirks from his childhood only escalated in his adulthood and brought a halt to his own ideology.
DiCaprio was very convincing in his portrayal of the zealous Howard Hughes and his need to succeed in both Hollywood and Aviation while being consumed by his own mental illness. It seems DiCaprio came up with the goods and delivered a performance worth recognition.
The movie commences with Hughes producing a privately financed movie. It is nice to get to watch Perfectionist Hughes make and remake, edit and re-edit his movie and enjoyable to see it done in a fresh and buzzing Hollywood. During production of a movie he pursues the headstrong Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), the most prominent actress around at the time, who engages in a stormy relationship with Hughes. A heart stopping moment in the movie is when Howard takes Katherine up in the plane for some flying lessons.
One track minded Howard becomes relentless in pursuit to own an airline that flies internationally. Of course the competition is sour grapes and Hughes is backed into a corner by Juan Tripp, Pan American Airlines (Alec Baldwin) and a Senator's attempts to bully Howard into a corner.
All in all, the movie portrayed Howard Hughes in his flight for perfection; from his ingenious engineering to his relentless vision as a director and ultimately his demise.