Hollow but visually impressive portrait of America's favourite loon!

Rating: 7/10 (29 October 2006)

The early life of billionaire flier and racist (not tackled for box office reasons!) oddball Howard Hughes.
There are some people whose name comes with a built in full stop. A moment to pause while you think of all those things they did, achieved or represented. Howard Hughes is one such case, but you cannot rank him up with the great visionaries or the great eccentrics like Einstein, Van Gough or Michael Angelo - these people mixed talent with their madness. As director Martin Scorsese is forced to admit (after the entertaining crash-bang has ended) - most of the things that HH came up with didn't work or couldn't work.
(Jane Russell never wore the bra he designed for her over-sized breasts - a point that the film skirts around.)
Hughes took the money of his (far more brilliant) father and while entertaining with it - didn't spend too much time at school learning the basic rules of flying or film making (you try sitting through anything other than Hells Angels). However with money you can buy your own trophies and good PR- and Hughes had very deep pockets.
Martin Scorsese revisits some of his greatest hits and greatest flops in this movie. The long drawn out entrance to a night-club from Goodfellas and the souped-up camp of New York, New York: When you to any night-club in a film you can be sure that every extra will look like a professional dancer and the main players will smoke/drink (although Hughes didn't) and exchange loaded barbs. Amazing how witty the whole world is in films!
Leo DiCaprio has an unfortunate face. He is destined to look 15 until late middle age and you can't do a thing about it. Stick all the fluff you want on his face and then add a bottle of hair grease and he still looks like he has stepped out of Buggsy Malone. He is not a bad actor (and getting better) but no one can claim he was cast for anything other than box office. Worse Martin Scorsese uses lighting to try and bring gravitas to his unconvincing appearance. He is just miscast and that is the end of it.
Katherine Hepburn (here played by Cate Blanchett: Deserved as Oscar? I'm not sure!) had no taste in men. She liked to be the superior partner is her relationships so she chose oddballs, broke artists and addicts. Maybe these were the few men she didn't scare away. Hughes had money and toys and while it is presented here as some central relationship (Hughes treated all women as if they could be bought, sold or exchanged) it was nothing of the sort. Spencer Tracy was one of Americas greatest actors but also a chronic and incurable alcoholic. In him she found her ideal match!
Madness is hard to capture on film. It is often not a level dip. It can come and go, get worse, get better, even be effected by the weather. No one has a clue if it is was two planes crashes (there might have been more) or some disease that took HH out of circulation. Clifford Irving thought Hughes was too mad to dispute his fake autobiography (not featured here) but he pulled himself together. Even from his self-made lunatic asylum bed!
It is good to see that Scoresese is back on something like form after a string of so-so efforts. Despite the money he is given to spend on props the quality of actor isn't around to pull this kind of thing off. Too many dough boys with plastic teeth and empty eyes. Without these bricks nobody - and I mean nobody - can make an engrossing classic film. All you can come up with is pretty backdrops and sweeping scores and hope nobody notices the lack of major talent in the speaking parts.