We've always been perversely fascinated by the way Amelia Earhart died. But here's a movie about the way she lived.
Pity to be, however appropriately, up in the air about Amelia. That said, this is still, despite a lack of bold psychological insight, an admirable biographical drama.
Amelia is a classically structured look at the legendary aviatrix. Her adventurous life brought her global fame and made her a celebrity but ended in tragic mystery, as she disappeared without a trace over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 -- an unsolved mystery that has led to varied speculation, resulting in a rash of rumors and theories about exactly what might have happened.
Hilary Swank stars as the outspoken Earhart, the most famous female aviator in history and a woman whose charisma and courage helped to make her a feminist role model and icon during her lifetime and beyond.
Following her first transatlantic voyage in 1928 -- she was the first woman, and second person after Charles Lindbergh, to fly solo across the Atlantic -- she became a much-needed source of inspiration during the Depression.
Richard Gere plays publisher and publicist George Putnam, Earhart's business manager, relentless promoter, and Amelia's eventual husband.
Earhart, who has remained an inspiration to generations of women, was also a fashion icon and designer, a leader in women's rights and the peace movement, a pioneering businesswoman, and one of the first media celebrities -- she was dubbed "Lady Lindy" in honor of the various Lindbergh parallels.
Swank (who co-executive-produced with screenwriter Ronald Bass) looks enough like the real-life Earhart that director Mira Nair (The Namesake, Vanity Fair, Monsoon Wedding) is able to incorporate actual newsreel footage of the real Earhart.
Swank follows such other Earhart impersonators as Rosalind Russell in Flight for Freedom; Susan Clark in the telemovie Amelia Earhart; Diane Keaton in the telemovie Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight; and, most recently, Amy Adams in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
Swank's Earhart is driven, stubborn, outspoken, and resolutely independent. The double-Oscar-winner actress is quite effective and inspiring, and you get the impression that she could have delivered more if only the script had challenged her more.
The same might be said for the dependable Gere, who is smooth and likable in the other underwritten role.
The supporting cast includes Ewan McGregor as aviation pioneer Gene Vidal (dad of Gore), the third angle of the film's romantic triangle; Cherry Jones as first lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and Christopher Eccleston as Fred Noonan, the troubled navigator with whom Earhart disappeared.
Nair gives her romantic adventure tale the kind of sweep that recalls Out of Africa, utilizing handsome period production design and striking, compelling, aerial cinematography to keep us visually enthralled.
The screenplay by Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan (based on two books, East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart by Susan Butler and The Sound of Wings by Mary S. Lovell) uses her ill-fated attempt to fly around the world in 1937 as the film's bookends in a script that certainly seems authoritative but is on the superficial side, as if digging below the surface might seem disrespectful in some way.
But the other way to look at it is that here's a biographical drama the writers of which trust that their subject is inherently interesting enough to stick to what's known and maintain an out-of-fashion earnestness throughout their reportage.
More stately than shapely, Amelia takes off with us aboard and lands safely. And we enjoy the flight even though we exit wishing there had been a bit more to it -- that the emotional payoff had been higher.
Consequently, the film works better as a history lesson or as a coed companion piece to Martin Scorsese's The Aviator than as a thought-provoking psychoanalysis. That is, no toes get stepped on, but few fires get lit.
On balance, we'll navigate 3 stars out of 4 for the admittedly shallow but nonetheless thoroughly absorbing inspirational biopic Amelia, which plays it a bit too safe, but has got more than its share of both air and heart.
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Following her first transatlantic voyage in 1928 -- she was the first woman, and second person after Charles Lindbergh, to fly solo across the Atlantic -- she became a much-needed source of inspiration during the Depression.
