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'The Aviator'

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The real drama going on in "The Aviator," Martin Scorsese's high-flying and handsome look at 20 years in the life of Howard Hughes, isn't about Hughes. It's about the 62-year-old Scorsese. Will this be the film that finally brings the director of "Tax Driver," "Mean Streets" and "Goodfellas" a long-overdue Oscar?

"The Aviator" isn't as good as those films, but it's a wonderful showcase for Scorsese's passion for making movies, which, in a sense, parallels the passion Hughes had for making movies. And breaking aviation records. And designing a bra for Jane Russell to wear in "The Outlaw" that made her breasts simulate the forward thrust of his beloved airplanes.

Miramax Films 'The Aviator' B The verdict: A really good movie that really doesn't work, but is worth seeing anyway. Director: Martin Scorsese Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Kate Beckinsale, Cate Blanchett Run time: 168 minutes Release date: Dec. 24, 2004 Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, sexual content, nudity, language and crash sequence See showtimes On the web Official movie site View the trailer   -- Trailers require Quicktime Rate "The Aviator":   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Wisely, the director doesn't attempt to cover Hughes' entire life. The sordid final chapter in which the billionaire holed up in a hotel suite, where he let his hair and fingernails grow to mythic proportions and shuffled around in Kleenex boxes instead of shoes, is merely hinted at. (That Hughes is best embodied by a whimsical Jason Robards in 1980's terrific "Melvin and Howard.")

Instead, the movie focuses on Hughes' glory years between 1927 and 1947, whether it was revolutionizing air travel, making pictures that predated the "event" movie by about 40 years or dating the likes of Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett, splendid) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale, dismal).

In a thankfully brief prologue, we see a bare naked young Howard being scrubbed down lovingly by his mother, who warns him the world is a germ-ridden place. (This is supposed to partly explain Hughes' later obsessive-compulsive behavior, but it doesn't work.) Then, we're plunged into 1927, on the set of Hughes' (Leonardo DiCaprio) World War I epic, "Hell's Angels." The scene is a masterfully shot, jaw-dropping panorama. Airplanes landing and taking off. Mechanics busily occupied with anything that has wings. Actors loitering around in costume. And the film crew, waiting and waiting and waiting for Hughes to roll 'em.

The three years it takes to get "Hell's Angels" into theaters smartly illustrates Hughes' borderline-neurotic perfectionism. He won't shoot the aerial dogfights until he can find clouds like "giant breasts filled with milk." And when talkies turn Hollywood upside down, he insists the entire picture be re-shot.

Later, a scene at the famed Coconut Grove, a '30s nightclub with more stars that there were in heaven or at MGM, smoothly establishes Hughes' other peculiarities as well as his seductive personality. First, he wipes the table with a napkin, then surreptitiously drops it on the floor so he can get another. Then Errol Flynn (a jaunty Jude Law) strolls over and inadvertently ruins Hughes' dinner by stealing a single pea from his plate. Finally, a pretty cigarette girl is so taken with Hughes' flattery, she cheerfully agrees to let him put his hand up her skirt.

When Blanchett shows up, brimming with Hepburn energy, she not only wakes up the movie, she warms it up, too, helping counterbalance a certain remote quality that runs throughout the film. Her portrayal goes beyond mere impersonation or mimicry. She inhabits the Great Kate's cadences, her haughty Yankee hardheadedness, the way this supposed sophisticate could burst out with a delighted "Golly!" Striding into Hughes' life, she's portrayed as his one true love (which may or may not be true). And she articulates what makes the two of them different from other people. "Too many acute angles. Too many eccentricities," she says -- words that could apply to the notoriously Hollywood-phobic Scorsese as well.

"The Aviator" -- a Hollywood movie, Scorsese style -- loses momentum in its second hour. Though Scorsese offers us some spectacular flying sequences and a beyond-spectacular crash-landing in Beverly Hills, Hughes becomes increasingly isolated. That may be true about the man, but it isn't good for the movie. With Blanchett gone, DiCaprio hasn't anyone to act with in any significant way. John C. Reilly, this generation's Karl Malden, is around at first as Hughes' money man, but he's eventually relegated to phone calls. Beckinsale's pert-nosed profile has nothing to do with Gardner's lush beauty, nor can she capture the actress' what-the-hell earthiness. The one recurring character, the comically laconic and plane-crazy engineer, Glenn Odekirk (Matt Ross), barely makes an impression as the two swap technical jargon. Interminably.

The movie pulls itself together for the third act, as does Hughes. After the crash leaves him disfigured and in constant pain, Hughes retreats to a germ-free zone (his screening room) and, in a portent of things to come, lets his hair and nails go nuts and collects his urine in carefully sealed milk bottles. Then, he comes back from the brink of madness and goes out on a triumphant note -- buying out his rival CEO at Pan Am (a very good Alec Baldwin), facing down a corrupt Senator (an even better Alan Alda), and getting his million-ton miracle baby, the Spruce Goose as it was nicknamed, off the ground -- even if it only went little more than a mile.

Initially, DiCaprio seems as miscast as he was in "Gangs of New York." But as the movie progresses, he eases into Hughes' rangy Texas-outsider persona, his misleading good-ol'-boy manners and drawl. His Hughes is a mix of blinkered arrogance and boyish enthusiasm -- part master of the universe, part kid in a candy store.

"There's too much Howard Hughes in Howard Hughes," Kate/Cate declares. Similarly, there may be too much Howard Hughes for a Howard Hughes movie. Scorsese paints a broad canvas, but he never goes very deep. What, we wonder, turned Hughes from an oddball, who orders chocolate chip cookies with "medium-sized chips, not too close to the outside," into a panting, paralyzed hysteric, trapped in the men's room because he can't bring himself to touch the doorknob.

Scorsese doesn't say. More likely, he doesn't know. But though he can't get inside Hughes' head, he nails Hughes' image and impact: the would-be Icarus who almost touches the sun, but can't touch a glass with a fingerprint on it. More importantly, he shows us Hughes' can-do, all-American spirit. Almost the first words out of DiCaprio's mouth are, "Don't tell me I can't do it."

Perhaps that's the key to why Scorsese wanted to make this film. Hughes was a taciturn Texan, with billions at his disposal. Scorsese is an asthmatic New Yorker who grew up poor in Little Italy and has had to scramble for money to make his movies. Yet they had this in common: No use telling either man what he could and could not do.