Three and a half stars

PG-13, 166 minutes, South WInd 12

The Aviator is a biopic about a man with dreams greater than the world wanted them to be: Howard Hughes. This film, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring a talented and diverse ensemble including Leonardo DiCaprio, cast almost perfectly, captures the man and his accomplishments. It also shows how Hughes wasn’t able to handle the greatness of his own life.

The film starts in the late 1920s with Hughes already a millionaire businessman and focused on a career in the movie business. His film Hell’s Angels would become the most expensive movie of its time because of Hughes’s obsession with perfection, drawing out production and eventually having to finance it himself just to see it finished. Making the film bankrupts him, but when he finished, Hell’s Angels is successful and made Hughes his millions back and famous in the process.

This opening act of The Aviator is indicative of the rest of the film. Hughes settles for nothing less than the greatness that leads to his downfall. After Hell’s Angels, Hughes goes on to court Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), design and pilot the fastest plane ever built and build the largest aircraft of its time, becoming the world’s richest man in the process.

The talented supporting cast includes Blanchett, Jude Law, John C. Reilly and Kate Beckinsale. Blanchett’s portrayal of Hepburn stands out among them. She does a good job of inhabiting her character and not letting herself become a living caricature. Scorsese’s film lets Hughes’s life speak for itself and its grandeur, and as a result, is pure entertainment.