With its excesses and too-long running time, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator is hardly perfect. But it is a rousing and marvellous experience that soars into the thin, heady air above the clouds whenever Leonardo DiCaprio is channeling the lead character, Howard Hughes.

For better or worse, Hughes, a real-life eccentric American tycoon, helped to shape the history of the 20th century, particularly in aviation. Complex, infuriating, despicable and admirable, he was also a genius-madman, in equal measures.

What a life! What a tumultuous era! It is astonishing that more has not been made of him in the movies. He is a romantic, dashing icon. But, aside from documentaries, Hughes has only popped up as a minor figure or a fictionalized lead character. It took history buff DiCaprio's obsession to get this one going -- and on a monumental scale.

John Logan (Gladiator) wrote the screenplay and managed to winnow Hughes' multi-chaptered life down to a manageable two decades that speak volumes. Save for a boyhood memory scene that opens the piece, the film rockets from 1927 -- when Hughes took Hollywood by storm on the set of his World War I aerial epic Hell's Angels -- to the late 1940s -- when Hughes, now mentally ill with his obsessive compulsive disorder, fought off a Congressional investigating committee that had branded him a war profiteer and a failure.

Hughes' saddest years, holed up as a hermit in a Las Vegas hotel, are ignored.

Only the onset of madness is depicted.

Critically, the 1920s-1940s period is given a rich, vibrant life through sensational production design and great direction, whether it's the gut-wrenching spyplane crash or the flight of the Spruce Goose or the wild atmosphere of the Cocoanut Grove that evokes the trashy mood of Hollywood then.

On screen, DiCaprio has the long, lanky and handsome look of Hughes. It's uncanny how much he looks like the real deal. The reedy voice, with its slight Texas accent, is accurate too.

DiCaprio, in the finest performance of his adult career, also captures the spirit of Hughes and makes him vulnerable and believable while still showing the capricious, selfish side that made Hughes repugnant.

Scorsese surrounds DiCaprio with a galaxy of strong faces and good actors, among them Kate Beckinsale (as Ava Gardner), Alec Baldwin (Hughes' airline nemesis, Juan Trippe), John C. Reilly (Hughes' business partner Noah Dietrich), Alan Alda (weaselly U.S. senator Owen Brewster), Jude Law (party-boy Errol Flynn) and Gwen Stefani (in a cool cameo as Jean Harlow).

Topping them all in the support category is Cate Blanchett as Kate Hepburn, the Hollywood star who was Hughes' lover for three years and a friend for longer. The voice, the posture, the couture, the defiance, and the conflicted intellectual essence of Hepburn is all in evidence -- Blanchett should be handed the best supporting actress Oscar right now.

Actually, The Aviator has "Oscar nominations" written all over it, including for Scorsese, who massages this sprawling epic into one of the most interesting films of the year.

(This Film is rated 14-A)
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