On DVD: The Aviator

Leonardo Di Capri turns in an Oscar worthy performance as eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes in Martin Scorcese’s epic The Aviator. The movie is great at every turn particularly the pacing. There are no wasted scenes and very little guidance as to what the next scenes will be. One minute Howard Hughes is discussing one of his movies and the next scene he is in an airplane hangar barking out instructions on how to build the fastest airplane.

The film really is not about Hughes’s accomplishments in film and aviation, it is more a character study of a maniacal genius trying to desperately hold it all together. You have to ask yourself was his genius born out of madness or his madness born out of genius…I don’t know. Either way it goes, this is the man that started TWA, fought off a hostile takeover by Pan Am then took on the government and beat them at their own game.

DiCaprio certainly could have been given the Oscar for his performance, this is the best I have ever seen him and I was thoroughly impressed. He seemed to become madder and madder as the movie went on totally making us believe we were watching Howard Hughes. Most people alive today don’t remember Hughes and that could account for the Oscar snub,(that and an amazing performance by Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles) Hughes died in 1976 and most of today’s moviegoers weren’t born yet. Before Gates and Trump there was Howard Hughes, billionaire, eccentric, womanizer and Aviator.