DiCaprio Won Me Over

Rating: 7/10 (12 March 2005)

No, it's not the greatest film ever and both Ray and MDBaby both outdid it...but I came away with a greater respect for DiCaprio than I expected. After he seemed so wrong for the part in Gangs I wondered about his suitability for Howard Hughes. Between makeup and his hard work I came to believe he really WAS the reclusive Hughes. I'd be interested to know how many of the aircraft were real and how much was CGI. If you can find a more realistic special effects gig than the neighborhood crash of his spy plane I'd like to see it. Thought the switching from outdoor to indoor perspectives was convincing. There was something about the continuity of the film that left me wondering if Hughes just fell in and out of these paranoid fugues. One minute he's the Naked Unshaved Beast and then Ava has him spiffied up jousting with Congress. Jude Law and Alec Baldwin were useless high-priced additions that could have been used elsewhere.