The Aviator: Movie & DVD Review

(Originally published Dec. 25, 2004)

The new Martin Scorsese movie, "The Aviator," is the one movie everyone will be talking about - and rightfully so. Other films will challenge it at the Academy Awards- "Sideways," "Kinsey," "Million Dollar Baby" - but what Scorsese achieves here is the reason we go to the movies.

Seamlessly and with great panache, his hugely entertaining film, a biopic of the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), combines drama, action and comedy into such a compelling form, it lights the screen as if from within.

Most movies are a diversion. Too many are trash. But others you give yourself to. "The Aviator" is that kind of movie. It finds Scorsese, at age 62, directing with the nerve and verve of a young man. He's back in top form here, which is a nice surprise considering the miscalculations and shortcomings of his last film, "Gangs of New York."

Spanning 20 key years in Hughes' life, the film is more concerned with capturing the essence of Hughes - his tight-fisted energy, the obsessive compulsive disorder that eventually gripped him - than offering deeper insights into the man, who remains here an enigma. It begins with a snapshot of Hughes in childhood, when he inherited his father's fortune, and then plunges with a flourish into the heart of the story.

It moves through Hughes' early years in Hollywood in the 1920s, when he struggled to film his war movie, "Hell's Angels," in spite of uncooperative weather conditions, millions of wasted dollars, and a shift in the industry from silent films to sound. Nevertheless, he triumphed.

It follows his intense, complicated love affair with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett in a great performance) in the 1930s, when he was trying to break the air speed record and, in the meantime, dealing with the love and jealousy of a challenging woman.

It soars through the 1940s, when Hughes' infamous fear of germs was beginning to sink him just as two men were working to do the same: Maine Sen. Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) and Pan Am's Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), who was using Brewster's Washington muscle to prevent Hughes' Trans World Airlines from becoming a competitive powerhouse in the international airways.

One of the best scenes in the movie - and the reason Alda will receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor - occurs when Hughes and Brewster spar at the heated Brewster hearings. It's furious, marvelous, a clash of personalities that's riveting.

Other scenes in "The Aviator" are equally masterful, such as the decadent recreation of the parties at the Coconut Grove; the harrowing scene in which Hughes takes to the skies to film an aviation battle from "Hell's Angels"; the sly moment Hughes first meets Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale); or the scene in which Hughes woos Hepburn in a dreamy flight over Los Angeles.

The movie's single best scene involves Hughes crashing a plane into the rooftops of Beverly Hills. At first, it's played for comedy, but then Scorsese deftly turns it deadly serious. It's just another moment to savor in a film filled with such moments. Here is your holiday gift from Hollywood. Enjoy.

Grade: A