Bloated Yet Brilliant

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2005)

Scorsese tends to love every single shot lately and really should cut down his movies BIG time. There was a good forty minutes that could have been cut and yet I understand - the art direction, the costumes, the cinematography is stunning and he wants to show it ALL. I felt that DiCaprio gives a fine performance and by the end of the movie, I damn well bought that he WAS Howard Hughes.In fact, I felt the movie was very well acted. The plane crash sequence is one of the most exciting and disturbing and brilliantly edited scenes I've seen in years. I actually felt the movie spent way too much time focusing on Hughes' already well known germaphobia. In fact, I really despised the opening of the film and how Scosese felt the need to bring it back up at the end for a bit of a wraparound. The scenes with Hughes as a little boy being told by his mother about all the dangerous cholera and other diseases going around was a bit too on the head and then really jackhammered home at the finale. But the sequences on his obsession with filming Hell's Angels and the battles with Pan Am were extremely involving and fascinating. I've read a lot books about Hughes but the re-creations of the planes and aviation and some of the battle scenes in Hell's Angels was remarkable.