Do your worst, Mr. Scorsese!

Rating: 2/10 (14 October 2005)

After his former boss became a barking-mad recluse, Noah Dietrich wrote a book claiming that he was the power behind the throne upon which sat Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. That is pure bunk, but Martin Scorsese apparently bought it. No hint of the genius who parlayed his inheritance into a multi-billion dollar empire. Corporate titans Simon Ramo, Dean Woolridge and Tex Thornton all cut their teeth at Hughes; Dietrich didn't find them, Hughes did. Yet Marty couldn't manage to squeeze this into his opus.
I also wish he hadn't worked from a retread of A Beautiful Mind. Like John Nash, Hughes was a racist, anti-Semitic prick who carried on with both sexes. When The Master is made to nip at Opie's heels, something is very wrong! It was perverse to make Hughes this Great Hero, complete with semi-happy ending. Even more perverse was the shot of the projector making the big creep a Christ figure.
The casting was horrid! My boxer looks more like Ava Gardner (reimagined as a whore that can't be bought!) than Kate Beckinsale! And I was constantly distracted by Cate Blanchett's mile-wide mouth and hoary vocals. Was she playing Katharine Hepburn or Martha Raye? Howard bought Kate The Philadelphia Story, the property that turned her career around, after she left him and before she met Spencer Tracy. Yet Marty couldn't manage to squeeze any of this into his opus, either (or get the facts straight). Still, when she exits, The Aviator loses its pop. And all DiCaprio, the perpetual 18 year old, proves is that he has this thing for screwing his forehead into knots. Does his forehead have an agent, and how much does it get per knot?
Hughes was married while making Hell's Angels, but the Mrs. is nowhere to be seen. Marty really dropped the ball here. Ella Rice was his college sweetheart. Exploring their relationship would have opened a whole new side to Hughes. What made him want to conquer aviation, movies and golf? Your guess is as good as mine.
Audacious and gorgeous as only Marty can do it, The Aviator would have been a masterpiece if the script had been written by a writer who could actually write, then started at minute 105. That's when Poor Little Rich Boy slams his shiny new toy into a Beverly Hills neighborhood. It has to be the most incredible plane crash ever put on film. The previous 104 minutes are a bore.