Director Scorsese deftly tells the billionaire recluse's story

There is a natural fascination with the rich, and even more so with the eccentric rich.

On both counts, industrialist-filmmaker-womanizer-recluse Howard Hughes is a larger-than-life figure made for the silver screen.

Miramax Films 'The Aviator' B+ The verdict: A jaunty epic portrait of larger-than-life Hughes from adoring fan, director Scorsese. 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

Although Martin Scorsese did not set out to direct The Aviator — a project initiated by fellow director Michael Mann — his intense interest in film lore and willingness to tackle stories on a grand scale make him well-suited to the daunting task of a Hughes biography.

Getting inside Hughes' head to explain his passions and his neuroses, however, proves more difficult than merely showing his excesses. Among the many choice sequences in The Aviator are Hughes' money-be-damned enthusiasm for filming the World War I dogfight epic Hell's Angels, and his days as an unkempt, drug-dependent, germ-phobic hermit.

But like William Randolph Hearst, or more precisely Charles Foster Kane, with whom Scorsese and screenwriter John Logan are eager to draw parallels, the primal question of what makes Hughes tick goes essentially unanswered. That does not stop The Aviator from being an enjoyable, if overlong, excuse to eat popcorn — just not the definitive psycho-history.

It begins puckishly with Howie's mom giving the lad an intimate bath and teaching him the word quarantine, a concept that will prove primal in his pathology, the equivalent of Kane's "Rosebud."

But Hughes is orphaned early and left, alas, a multimillionaire. With his resources, he is able to indulge his enthusiasm for speed, both in airplanes and in women.

With the film's emphasis on Hughes as a young adult, Leonardo DiCaprio is a canny casting choice. He is a dashing, callow figure, playing with his toys. His biggest worry seems to be controlling the cloud formations to optimize the background of his movie. Late in The Aviator, when Hughes is locked in contentious congressional hearings with Sen. Ralph Brewster (Alan Alda), DiCaprio seems to be a boy sent to do a man's job, with the time frame and ages deliberately fuzzed.

That is not the actor's fault, nor is he to blame if the picture is stolen out from under him by Cate Blanchett doing a delicious impersonation of Kate Hepburn, one of Hughes' many romantic interests. A vocal chameleon on the order of Meryl Streep, Blanchett gets Hepburn's quirky speech patterns down cold, but it is the defiant walk, the uncompromising attitude and the zest that she also channels so well.

Other actresses linked to Hughes, like Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale) and Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner), pale in comparison.

Despite Hughes' interest in glorifying women, The Aviator is a man's world, as is usually the case with Scorsese. Alda's Brewster is a wily, cordial pit bull; Alec Baldwin is effective as a shadowy aviation rival heading Pan Am to Hughes' TWA; John C. Reilly leaves a favorable impression as a Hughes underling; and even Jude Law drops by to play Errol Flynn, last of his six performances released in four months.

In distinct contrast to Gangs of New York, which Scorsese may have brooded over to death, The Aviator feels refreshingly breezy. The director may not have delivered on the psychological front, but he is clearly in command, piloting this aerodynamically sound epic, even if one of his more virtuoso scenes involves a harrowing plane crash amid the homes of Beverly Hills.

Whether or not this becomes the film that gains Scorsese a directing Oscar — a lack that continues to be a puzzlement — his Aviator is a soaring achievement.

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