There is very little to dislike about Martin Scorsese's latest box-office offering, The Aviator, which is leading the Oscar race with 11 nominations. Like Scorsese's last epic, Gangs Of New York in 2002, The Aviator possesses all the elements of a great Hollywood movie; it has enough drama to keep mature audiences engaged and enough CGI-enhanced action-sequences to keep the younger set glued to the edge of their seats. Like the former also, The Aviator has baby-faced Leonardo DiCaprio in the plump leading role. Here, he is the millionaire playboy and aviation-fanatic Howard Hughes, whose reputation was legendary in the U.S and whose name conjured an image of old Hollywood glamor and grandeur. To his credit, Scorsese has recreated the latter with amazing detail and authenticity and he also sustains this breath-taking realism even in his eye-popping action-sequences, thus proving his mettle as one of the most acclaimed directors in the world today.
Truthfully speaking, I've never been a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio and have successfully abstained from watching any of his movies (in the cinema at least) eversince his break-through role as Jack in the mother of all epics which is Titanic. In The Aviator, he has, quite shockingly, earned for himself a Golden Globe for his portrayal (probably, the fates had let him win just to spite me... ;p ) but in my honest opinion, the person to look out for here is the luminous Cate Blanchett who plays the larger-than-life Katherince Hepburn; a lesser actress would have turned the role into a laughable caricature. It's just too bad that Kate Beckinsale wasnt as memorable in her turn as Ava Gardner, but then again, she hadnt much screen time anyway.
Stunning visuals and an excellent supporting cast complete the film and it is indeed one the best movies to appear this season, although of course, very commercialised and made-to-please-the-masses. One major gripe I had though, was Scorsese's lame effort at depicting Hughes descent into OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder); In the opening sequence, we see him as a young boy spelling out the word QUARANTINE in a bathtub to his mother. Much later on in the movie, we have DiCaprio as Hughes spelling out the word again in his car as he battles to control his OCD attack. It is ridiculously easy to conclude from these two sequences that Hughes was slowly (yet surely) turning into a nut-case but seriously, OCD is a much more complicated psychological disease than that... and certainly, it didnt explain why his disorder exacerbated later on in his life.
Apart from that last bit however, as I've said before, there is very little to dislike about this biopic. my ratings ---- 4/5 stars~!!!
