Compared with many other bio pics in the last few years, this one suffers from lacking in emotion stirring ingredients. While Amelia Earhart may still be a popular icon to the general American public, the name may not even register in a global context. Even more realistically, the story of the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic almost a century ago would generate only mild interest at best. I would not have watched it but for Hilary Swank.
The narrative style is straightforward. Anchored on Earhart's close-up in the cockpit in her final flight across the Pacific (from which she vanished), her life story unfolds in her reflections, with a sprinkle of her own voice-over at the beginning and the end. The scenes alternate between her life's passion (flying in a plane) and the rest of her life (essentially emotional entanglements with two men). Both would have been somewhat banal today but back in the nineteen twenties and thirties would raise some eyebrows.
In the first department, we are treated to various mildly exciting episodes: dangerous fuel shortage in a flight across the Atlantic as a passenger, flying solo through perilous thunderstorms in the same route, attempted take-off in a Pacific Island that ended in crash. In the second department, the relationship is slights reminiscent of Camelot. Although the husband (Richard Gere) and the lover (Ewan McGregor) are not even as remotely as close as Richard and Lancelot, the tolerating husband and bewitched lover suggest the thought association.
If there is something in this movie that gives you its money's worth, it would be the last scene. Even though everyone knows (or must have heard) that Earhart's fateful flight disappeared over the Pacific (some say mysteriously, or even to the extent that it ended in the soils of an enemy state that Earhart was spying for), that last sequence generates considerable tension as we witness how she (together with the co-pilot) gradually loses wireless contact with the ground, her last hope of finding her bearings. The movie suggests, without showing the actual visual, that the lost plane plunged into the ocean, a logical treatment given what was known (or not known). But it's the final conversation (over wireless) before takeoff between Earhart and her husband that really plucks a heartstring. Gere provide good support but it's Swank that is at her best.
Just one more comment, on Hilary Swank's uncanny resemblance to the object of her portrayal. Think back on the portrayals of celebrities in the last few years and you'll notice that such a resemblance has become almost a basic requirement – Meryl Streep's Julia Child, Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles, Philip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote, Frank Langella's Richard Nixon, just to name a few. In some cases, particularly the last in my list, the resemblance comes not so much from physical likeness as from the actor's superb acting. This is where praise is most deserving.
The narrative style is straightforward. Anchored on Earhart's close-up in the cockpit in her final flight across the Pacific (from which she vanished), her life story unfolds in her reflections, with a sprinkle of her own voice-over at the beginning and the end. The scenes alternate between her life's passion (flying in a plane) and the rest of her life (essentially emotional entanglements with two men). Both would have been somewhat banal today but back in the nineteen twenties and thirties would raise some eyebrows.
In the first department, we are treated to various mildly exciting episodes: dangerous fuel shortage in a flight across the Atlantic as a passenger, flying solo through perilous thunderstorms in the same route, attempted take-off in a Pacific Island that ended in crash. In the second department, the relationship is slights reminiscent of Camelot. Although the husband (Richard Gere) and the lover (Ewan McGregor) are not even as remotely as close as Richard and Lancelot, the tolerating husband and bewitched lover suggest the thought association.
If there is something in this movie that gives you its money's worth, it would be the last scene. Even though everyone knows (or must have heard) that Earhart's fateful flight disappeared over the Pacific (some say mysteriously, or even to the extent that it ended in the soils of an enemy state that Earhart was spying for), that last sequence generates considerable tension as we witness how she (together with the co-pilot) gradually loses wireless contact with the ground, her last hope of finding her bearings. The movie suggests, without showing the actual visual, that the lost plane plunged into the ocean, a logical treatment given what was known (or not known). But it's the final conversation (over wireless) before takeoff between Earhart and her husband that really plucks a heartstring. Gere provide good support but it's Swank that is at her best.
Just one more comment, on Hilary Swank's uncanny resemblance to the object of her portrayal. Think back on the portrayals of celebrities in the last few years and you'll notice that such a resemblance has become almost a basic requirement – Meryl Streep's Julia Child, Jamie Foxx's Ray Charles, Philip Seymour Hoffman's Truman Capote, Frank Langella's Richard Nixon, just to name a few. In some cases, particularly the last in my list, the resemblance comes not so much from physical likeness as from the actor's superb acting. This is where praise is most deserving.