Shots and Issues Too Long

Rating: 6/10 (20 December 2004)

My father worked for Hughes Aircraft for over 30 years, so our family was especially interested in seeing this film about Howard Hughes. I enjoyed seeing the cinematography in this film. It was very nicely shot, especially the night scenes. However, I felt that the film's shots were overall too long. Confrontation scenes between Howard Hughes and Katherine Hepburn went on too long as did scenes showing Howard Hughes' neurosis (hand washing, being distracted by camera flashes and lens changes). I felt that to see a little bit of this was enough, but each scene seemed to be played out much longer than was needed to bring home the point. I also felt that too much time was spent with Howard Hughes' relationships with women (especially Katherine Hepburn) and not enough time showing each of the successes that Howard Hughes had in his career, especially aviation. I think that the prologue should have started out with his father inventing the oil drill bit that was patented. This would have been a better visual explanation of how the family got it's money. It's only alluded to in the film, but it would have been better to have shown this to create a foundation for the family money. I found myself squirming at times because I wanted the film to move more rapidly out of scenes.