The Aviator

January 12, 2005

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 170 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Martin Scorsese is great. Is he great because he always makes 5 star movies? No, that’s not the reason. He is great precisely because he *doesn’t* always make a 5 star movie. Some of his projects have been real stinkers, in fact. While he makes gems such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas, he sometimes pushes out drivel like Gangs of New York and Bringing Out the Dead.

The Aviator Why does this make him great? It’s because he dares to reach where other directors are too timid to go. When you do that, though, sometimes you reach too far and the inevitable fall occurs. You look at his pinnacle achievements and his rotten failures and then when you say, “Now *that* is Scorsese,” everyone knows exactly what you mean.

But now I’m a bit perplexed and disappointed. His current film, The Aviator, is perhaps the first Scorsese film I’ve ever seen where I just felt blah afterwards. It just doesn’t seem like he was reaching very far at all and, dare I say it, he was just going through the motions. Yes, it’s well done and the performances were quite good and there was top quality treatment given to every part of the movie, but it just didn’t grab my nads and make me want to cheer/curse aloud when the lights came up.

The movie stars Leonardo Dicaprio (yuck) as billionaire moviemaker and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes. Most folks who know who Howard Hughes was are aware that he went bonkers in the latter part of his life and left a huge fortune to squabbling relatives that is probably *still* tied up in courts today. What most people don’t know, however, is the brilliance and daring of his youth that made him the near mythical figure he is today.

With The Aviator, director Scorsese set out bring to light these early days of Mr. Hughes and has succeeded to a point. We learn that Hughes’ passions were aviation, movie making, and fine Hollywood starlets (not necessarily in that order). We also learn that during these great years, Hughes began to suffer from some serious psychological problems.

The performances here are very good, though I have to disclose that Cate Blanchett’s work as Kate Hepburn grated on my nerves and seemed just a bit too over the top. They say that this is really how Kate Hepburn was so she may have it spot on. If this is the case, though, I’m glad I never met her in her younger years or else I might have had to show her my pimp hand.

I think my big problem with the movie was in the structure. There seemed to be so much emphasis on the performances of the primary actors that the story took a back seat for a while. Perhaps Scorsese just took the attitude that this was history and it’s already written and all he had to do was just follow it step by step. This doesn’t always make for good storytelling, however. Especially when you are cutting out huge chunks of that history for the sake of time. Like a rock.

Oh, did I just mention time? This is a LONG movie. At nearly 3 hours long, it grows tedious in many places. Part of this problem is Scorsese’s tendency several times to kind of pause the movie and let his lead spend a few minutes emoting and working a scene that’s aimed squarely at the Academy Awards committee. If the movie had given that time over to filling in some of the time gaps, then perhaps the final product wouldn’t have seemed so overly long.

In any event, unless you’re a hardcore Scorsese fan, this is one that can easily wait for DVD or cable. Hopefully by the time it ends up in stores or on the TV schedule, we’ll have a much better film from the master in theaters that will make us forget about this somewhat lackluster anomoly.

Posted by Alex | Filed Under 3 Stars, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Drama, Kate Beckinsale, Leonardo DiCaprio, PG-13, Theatrical