Performances and Flight Sequences soar in the Aviator, but it's a tedious ride

Rating: 7/10 (14 February 2005)

Martin Scorcese's "The Aviator" is an extremely well made and crafted film with terric performances all around. Leonardo DiCaprio gives the performance of his career and the rest of the cast is terrific as well. Cate Blanchett has Katherine Hepburn down cold and Alan Alda steals scenes when he is on screen as a seedy Maine senator. I never knew much about Howard Hughes. My only recollection of him on screen is in the film "Melvin & Howard". He was obviously a genius, an aviation pioneer, a difficult man to work for, a man of vision, a womanizer, and a man with many phobias and quirks that eventually would cause many of his problems. DiCaprio manages to capture all of them and he does it very well. That's the good news.
The film takes Hughes career starting in the mid 1920's with the filming of his film "Hells Angels" and goes along through the Hepburn days and ends with his feud with the American government and the Senatorial hearings when he owned TWA and fought against a monopoly with Pan Am for international flight. In between all this, we watch Hughes go from movie star to movie star, build plane after plane, and eventually crash one of them in the middle of Beverly Hills and sustain major injuries which he recovers from mighty quickly. All the aviation stuff is very interesting. It's the personal phobias that made me uncomfortable. Hughes was a germ freak almost to the point where he should be institutionalized. He also admits to Hepburn at one point of the film that he sees demons. that isn't truly explained. There are a few things that aren't explained very well, yet we get multiple scenes of his quirks and phobias that seemed to go on way too long. There is an extended scene where he locks himself in a screening room for weeks when he has a breakdown. I felt like I was going to have a breakdown he was in there so long. The film needed an edit job as I was constantly looking at my watch at about the 2 hour mark. The ending is another issue I had a problem with as I felt it could've ended 10 minutes prior than it did.
I'm going to recommend "The Aviator" because with all it's problems, it's still a good film about a guy that is about as fascinating there is. I think everyone would wish they had a little bit of Hughes'vision and drive in them. (***)