A biopic depicting the life of filmmaker and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes from 1927 to 1947, during which time he became a successful film producer and an aviation magnate, while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Its primary appeal is its speed: It rushes along, from scandal to air crash to movie romance to Senate hearing, each anecdote well realized but never tarried over.
– Stephen Hunter,
Washington Post,
20 May 2005
fresh:
It's a measure of The Aviator's complexity and ambiguity that it can be read equally as a celebration of rugged, capitalist individualism and as a leftist critique of cutthroat free-market competition.
– Nathan Rabin,
AV Club,
26 Sep 2005
fresh:
Despite a pacy, technically brilliant but otherwise slightly ordinary first half-hour or so, Scorsese's Howard Hughes movie is his best since The Age of Innocence.
– Geoff Andrew,
Time Out,
24 Jun 2006
fresh:
This almost-great epic has one foot in legend: it's a vision of an American titan that could have sprung from the insides of Hughes's own obsessive, perfectionist head.
– David Ansen,
Newsweek,
1 Nov 2007
rotten:
This handsome movie is an oddly well-behaved one to come from the preternaturally energetic Scorsese.