The Aviator

Released 2004
Stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, John C. Reilly, Kate Beckinsale, Adam Scott, Alec Baldwin, Ian Holm, Alan Alda
Directed by Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese directs this Best Picture nominee about Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), who turned a small fortune into a massive one by producing such classics as Hell's Angels, The Front Page, Flying Leathernecks and Scarface. He simultaneously branched into and transformed industry after industry, including aviation. Winner of five Oscars, including Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett).

Summary from www.netflix.com

It's difficult to create an entertaining but reasonably factual bio-pic, because it has to cover so many years in a person's life, however, Scorsese has done an admirable job here. He limited the film to a reasonable amount of time and subplots so the movie could focus on a few aspects of Howard's life. If it weren't for his mental illness, Howard Hughes lived a life that most of us wish we could have lived. Besides becoming the richest man in the world, he was a bright engineer, a thrill seeking pilot, and a notorious playboy, but the mental illness ruled the end of his life and destroyed the man he was. As interesting as a film about that part of his life would be, this film covers the period when he was at his peak. It shows his recklessness and ambition but also his vision. He didn't become the world's richest man by thinking small. The movie probably concentrated too much on his failures, because I didn't get a sense of how he amassed his personal fortune. He inherited his father's tool company that funded everything else, but he grew that small fortune into the world's largest. I'd like to know what his successes were that led to that fortune.

I'd also like to understand a little more about his mental illness. He was afraid of germs but stashed paid call-girls all over town and jumped from one actress to the next. His appetite for women seemed insatiable, so I don't really understand how he reconciled that with his fear of germs. I'm sure no one understood it, but if he was so afraid of dying, why did he insist on test piloting all of his aircraft? It almost seemed like he had a death wish once he was in the air.

Overall, this is a pretty entertaining film that flashes through some of the key periods in Howard's life. Cate Blanchett is a standout as Katherine Hepburn, and the scene with her snobby family is a highlight. Another highlight is Howard's crash in his experimental spy plane. We have to guess what his rehab was like, but the crash itself was wonderfully filmed. I'm sure he would have had nightmares if he had lived to see it, but then that might be true about a lot of this film that shows him in both his glory and his degradation. --Bill Alward, June 4, 2005