The Aviator
Miramax Films | Release Date: December 17, 2004 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
77
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 41 Critics
Positive:
36
Mixed:
5
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
VarietyTodd McCarthy
An enormously entertaining slice of biographical drama, The Aviator flies like one of Howard Hughes' record-setting speed airplanes. Read full review
100
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Brilliantly entertaining. Read full review
100
USA TodayMike Clark
Despite the film's sporadic lulls, both director and star are on full beam. The first and third hours of this 20th-century epic are as dazzling as big-scale movies get. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Sumptuously exciting, glowing with expertise, seething with life, gorgeously designed and thrillingly articulated. Read full review
100
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
If you didn't know that Martin Scorsese made The Aviator, the enthralling new adventure-biography of Howard Hughes, you might think it was the calling card of a neophyte visual genius. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
This is one of the year's best films. Read full review
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
It's not his (Scorsese) best film, but it's his most accessible and most thoroughly entertaining. Read full review
91
Portland OregonianShawn Levy
The Aviator, though, if not prime Scorsese, is the closest thing in a long time to the old Scorsese. What a splendid year-end gift! Read full review
90
NewsweekDavid Ansen
DiCaprio is astonishing. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Ken Tucker
The result is an admirably bumpy ride of a biopic, a rare one that leaves you feeling not safe but bracingly unsettled. Read full review
90
Film ThreatChris Barsanti
This is Scorsese’s "Schindler's List", for better and for worse (mostly the better). Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter Travers
When it flies, it soars. Read full review
88
PremiereGlenn Kenny
So breathtaking is the action. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
Scorsese has crafted a rip-roaringly gorgeous-looking, beautifully acted biographical epic. But while firing on all cylinders, there's something oddly distancing about the picture. Read full review
80
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
A frenzied, sometimes overreaching biopic that paints in bold colors on a huge canvas, the film stars a never-better Leonardo DiCaprio--as perfectly cast here as he was miscast in "Gangs." Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Tainted or not, Hughes' life was a remarkable one, and, flawed or not, Scorsese's film version deserves the same accolade. Read full review
80
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Hugely entertaining and extravagantly empathetic. Read full review
80
EmpireSimon Braund
DiCaprio shines, dispelling fears that he hasn’t the weight to carry such a complex, forceful role. Read full review
80
SlateDavid Edelstein
But Cate Blanchett ... ahhhh. She doesn't impersonate Katharine Hepburn, she channels her. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleMarc Savlov
It’s bravura, classic Hollywood filmmaking, and you like to think that Hughes himself would have viewed it, if not appreciatively, then at least with a sense of kinship. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
A flawed but entertaining (and perhaps informative) tale. Read full review
75
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Scorsese, I think, is so invested in making The Aviator upbeat and rousing that the movie never quite reveals, the way that "Kinsey" or "Ray" or "A Beautiful Mind" or even a good E! True Hollywood Story do, how its hero's vision and his grand torments could be flip sides of the same temperament. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorDavid Sterritt
Has to be called one of the year's best movies. Credit goes partly to the built-in fascination of its subject and partly to its excellent cast. Read full review
75
New York PostLou Lumenick
The movie equivalent of a lavish coffee-table book, a love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood from one of its foremost students. Read full review
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
Running at about three hours, The Aviator is long, and the momentum occasionally flags. The depiction of Hughes's first mental breakdown feels a little obsessive-compulsive itself. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
The Aviator has a hole in its center, and Scorsese fills it the only way he can, with spectacle. He makes The Aviator colorful and entertaining from beginning to end. There are worse things. Read full review
75
Charlotte ObserverLawrence Toppman
Martin Scorsese understands one character better than any other American director: the man who rises in the world to wealth or prominence without attaining what he wants most. That's why Howard Hughes is an ideal subject for this director. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldRene Rodriguez
Scorsese has crafted a luxurious entertainment that goes down like a flute of sparkling, silky champagne. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Scorsese's most accomplished, most disciplined movie since GoodFellas. His most gorgeous, too, with the peaches'n'strawberries'n'cream palette of early Technicolor films. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeTy Burr
As luscious as the filmmaking craft here is, it lacks the rude vitality, the unpredictability, the pure American craziness of the films that should have won him (Scorsese) the Oscar: "Mean Streets," "Taxi Driver," "Raging Bull," and "GoodFellas." Read full review
70
TimeRichard Corliss
Despite its star's heroic efforts, The Aviator is a gorgeous jet, flying on automatic pilot. Read full review
70
L.A. WeeklyElla Taylor
A triumph of production design...As a character study, though, The Aviator is downright squeamish. Read full review
70
Wall Street JournalJoe Morgenstern
Watching the actors and gorgeous trappings is an adventure in cognitive dissonance. I didn't believe a single minute in almost three hours, but enjoyed being there all the same.
70
Dallas ObserverRobert Wilonsky
A fun and loving biopic Read full review
70
Chicago ReaderJonathan Rosenbaum
Lots can be said for The Aviator as entertainment, though not much for it as edification. Read full review
63
New York Daily NewsJami Bernard
A lush, panoramic, dizzyingly portrait of the many-tentacled entrepreneur Howard Hughes. Unfortunately, though it may finally gain an Oscar for director Martin Scorsese, it is not his best work. The movie is disappointingly flat. Read full review
60
The New York TimesManohla Dargis
Visually sumptuous if disappointingly hollow account of Hughes's early life. Read full review
60
TV Guide MagazineMaitland McDonagh
Brisk, glossy and gloriously art-directed, Scorsese's lavish biopic is a pop trifle, engaging but not compelling. Read full review
60
Washington PostDesson Thomson
We may enjoy watching the spectacles, but we don't much care for, or even have a feeling for, the guy in the cockpit. Read full review
60
The New RepublicStanley Kauffmann
This same film, shot for shot, line for line, could have been much more solid and engrossing, much farther up the Parnassian slope, with a better actor as Hughes. Read full review
50
Village VoiceMichael Atkinson
The Aviator could've been a "Raging Bull" brother film, given that masterpiece's crystalline purity of purpose and humiliated courage. But it brakes far short. Read full review
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