Delivering Gangs of New York after a quarter-century gestation may have had a cathartic effect on Martin Scorsese: his next film was his best for over a decade. Jaunty, propulsive and a visual feast, The Aviator spans 20-odd years in the life of Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio): drill-bit heir, Hollywood arriviste, serial ladykiller, cash-haemorrhaging businessman, germophobe OCD sufferer, and aviation pioneer. Hughes cut Lindbergh's New York-to-Paris time in half while setting the around-the-world record in 1938, and true to its subject, The Aviator could be the quickest two hours and 50 minutes ever committed to celluloid, driven thrillingly onward by Thelma Schoonmaker's symphonic editing.
Scorsese eludes dreary biopic traps by turning the film into what a old-style studio treatment of the restless entrepreneur might have looked like, even mimicking the Technicolor process of the early 1930s (so do not adjust your set when peas and trees temporarily appear turquoise). Neither judging nor whitewashing its protagonist, The Aviator dazzles on the surface while letting off depth charges of unforced irony: the paranoiac who hated crowds yet immersed himself in Hollywood; the flyboy who craved speed and danger in the air but could be paralysed by fear of a microbe-covered doorknob. Out of his depth in Gangs, DiCaprio excels as Hughes, his boyish energy and fearsome determination shading subtly into eye-darting, tic-choked mania.