The Aviator

(Herald rating: * * * * )

It's a movie with quite a wingspan. In its almost three hours, this largely riveting Martin Scorsese-directed biopic of American legend Howard Hughes really covers only 20 years of his life.

But from 1927 to 1947 he sure packed a lot in - movies, women, aircraft, airlines, air crashes, battles with those who stood in his way, madness and fade.

It's a lot to take in. Not all of it, however, leaves any real lasting impression. You end up knowing more about Hughes but understanding him not much more.

It suffers the flaws of many a biopic - what a man did can always be depicted, attempting to answer why did he it is fraught with the risk of over-simplification.

In this case the source of his obsessive-compulsive disorder, which eventually drove Hughes into self-imposed exile until his death in the 70s, gets a repeated Freudian flashback from his boyhood in Texas and his mother's warning about germs and disease from the wrong side of town.

Whether that also explained the real Hughes' apparent anti-semitism and racism isn't touched upon here. This is a prestige Oscar-aimed picture after all.

But if the point of those three hours is to humanise the larger-than-life industrialist who had his way with both Hollywood and the aeronautical industry, then it succeeds through sheer verve.

Whether it's above or on the ground, Scorsese keeps most of the movie exhilarating with scenes that crackle with the energy of the young, reckless Hughes, a man seemingly determined to spend his family's fortune and have a damn good time doing it.

That's whether it's in the cockpit trying to film his endless dogfight epic Hell's Angels, or later, crashing his newly developed World War II spyplane into Beverly Hills - the point when Hughes' Hollywood and aviation worlds literally collided and he started his own mental tailspin.

Back on terra firma, Scorsese infuses the shifting period with the celluloid tones of the time. It's clear from his lavishly detailed depiction that the director is in love with the idea of old Hollywood.

Casting DiCaprio in the role might bring on thoughts of the still boyish star standing on the wing of the Spruce Goose with this movie's Cate or Kate - Blanchett who plays Katherine Hepburn or Beckinsale who plays Ava Gardner - declaring "I'm the king of the world".

Fortunately, he pulls it off with a performance that captures both Hughes the titan - especially in a scene where his faces off against a post-war congressional hearing about airline ownership - and the man who eventually would lock himself away from the world.

There is many a fine supporting turn among the rest of the vast cast. Though it's hard what to make of Blanchett as Hughes' early paramour, Hepburn. It's a performance that is scary but jarring, which, given the woman she's playing, is probably about right.

She does however, get to say some of the film's more insightful things. Like when she's warning Hughes about how both of them aren't really suited to celebrity: "We're not like everyone else - too many acute angles, eccentricities."

In the end The Aviator is not quite the great picture that Oscar voters will probably think it is, though it's enough to get Scorsese that best director nod he's deserved so many times before. It's also a film about rich boy from Texas with a dubious flying record taking on a world that thinks he's off his rocker.

How in this year, under this presidency, can it fail?

CAST: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Gwen Stefani
DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese
RATING: M (adult themes)
RUNNING TIME: 170 mins
SCREENING: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas from Thursday