The Aviator

Scorsese has long been engaged with American myth and the rise and fall of mobsters, scumbags and low-lifes. On occasion, The Greatest American Filmmaker has gotten overly self-conscious in this enterprise. New York, New York and Gangs of New York, though not as meritless as many critics sniffily proclaimed, wielded the big ‘They Are Of America’ far too ostentatiously for their own good.

Happily, such self-aggrandisement is only right and fitting for a Howard Hughes biopic, and Scorsese has fashioned a bratty Citizen Kane around his demented anti-hero. Admittedly, there’s no Rosebud or scene to match Robert De Niro punching the cell walls in Raging Bull. But what The Aviator lacks in deep psychological insight, it makes up with razzmatazz.

Leonardo Di Caprio, a boy well-qualified to portray a young pup with the world at his feet, has never been better as the film-producing, womanising, billionaire aeroplane fetishist, and from the very outset, as he scrubs with tar-soap and rearranges peas on his plate, his glossy playboy is never very far from the dragon-taloned, urine-collecting, germophobe hermit Hughes would ultimately become.

Easily Scorsese’s most satisfying and glamorous film since Casino, The Aviator is gorgeously festooned with airborne Spielbergian set-pieces and Hughes’ exquisite women. Cate Blanchett’s captures Katherine Hepburn’s jittery genius with a marvellous high-wire act that threatens to plummet into parody but never actually does. Kate Beckinsale smoulders as Ava Gardner, though can’t quite ignite like the original. And Gwen Stefani, well, she delivers her two-and-a-half words of dialogue with aplomb and is suitably platinum blonde as Jean Harlow.

Unlike Scorsese’s regular protagonists, Hughes is an American life with no first act. He has nowhere to go, but down, down, down as he squanders his billions on aircraft and cloud hunting, his Dantean spiral recalling the furious coked-up paranoia of After Hours. That’s no bad thing. Come fly with Marty, everybody.