The greatest movie ever made..!

Good start, but then it gets ruined

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

the basic virtue - its freshness. it is a film made with passion and special for the right option for the lead roles. it is a homage. and a realistic portrait of a legendary woman. it is the simple and honest story behind the titles of newspapers. and this did it a great film. Hillary Swank shines as Amelia. and she gives not exactly a beautiful performance but the inspired way for discover her character out of the status of impressive statue. the ambition, the sacrifices, the need to be herself. this is all. and more. because "Amelia" is little more than a biopic. it is the perfect answer to the expectations about yourself who grows up from the early years for each from us.

If you are here to check out reviews of "Amelia" in the hope of a gripping cinematic adventure, please be warned to lower your expectations. My own proved far too high, founded on my longstanding admiration for the charismatic 1930s heroine of the skies and on a love of flying in old turboprop planes and noisy small aircraft whenever the chance arises, sidelining guilt about my bit part in aviation's major contribution to ozone depletion. Of course Amelia Earhart was free of today's environmental worries, with great distances topping her list of challenges.When I heard that the dependable and gifted Hilary Swank had been cast in the star role, my hopes soared with a feeling that she would be perfect for the part like the smart, spunky and enthusiastic all-American girl she seems to be. And excellent she is. I had doubts about Richard Gere in the role of the publisher who becomes Earhart's fund-raising promoter and more. My prejudice was unfairly based on a period when I sat through someone's young appetite for some of the sloppiest high romance movies ever endured. Back then, Gere then seemed omnipresent and utterly beyond credibility and I started avoiding his films!But years pass. In fact, Gere does very well in the role of the patient and increasingly affectionate George P. Putnam, while Ewan McGregor is good as the commercial flight pioneer Gene Vidal. He also becomes part of a love triangle, testified to by his son Gore. Equally worthy of mention are Cherry Jones in a cameo part as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Christopher Eccleston as Amelia's navigator Fred Noonan on her final ill-fated bid to be the first woman to fly round the world.Amelia lifts us off the ground in the lengthy flight sequences in Mira Nair's film, the parts I usually enjoyed the most. We are granted the spectacular views that any airborne movie should dish up, with some splendid photography and a taste of the thrill of the rides across different oceans between continents. And when Earhart succeeds in her accomplishments, we see the ticker-tape parades and meet younger female fliers whom she does her best to encourage in a man's world.So what's so disappointing about "Amelia"? It's hard to pin down precisely, but to start with both script and direction are serviceable but pedestrian, failing fully to flesh out some key characters and at least sustain constant interest. The very worst of the film, after spells of boredom despite valiant efforts by the actors, concerns the last known hours of Earhart's short life, which make for a missed opportunity.The aviator is world famous for attempting the almost impossible, risking all on a bid to complete her planetary tour by landing on tiny Howland Island in the Pacific to refuel and fly on to coastal America. If any true-life exploit shown on screen should generate a sense of action and high adventure, that was the biggest in Earhart's career, but Nair's movie falls regrettably short of the reality.True, the film-makers portray in some detail one of the controversial accounts of the fatal communications breakdown between Amelia's Lockheed Elektra and the USS Itasca moored off Howland, which led to the disappearance of the aircraft. Yet hardly any real tension builds up in these climactic scenes aboard plane and ship. The cast seems all but abandoned to make their best of a bad job, not for the first time, which I blame on script flaws and unadventurous direction.Maybe Nair tried to plod her way too close to all the details she and the producers knew to be accurate, without venturing into a little creative licence to raise the dramatic stakes. But when I rate her film 6/10, that's an acknowledgement of the background research and of factors such as the acting and some striking sets. These mean I am ready to see it more than once while wishing it could have been much more exciting, like Earhart's life often was.I get a far bigger emotional punch from listening to Heather Nova singing "I Miss My Sky (Amelia Earhart's Last Days)" on her "Redbird" album than I did from that last act of the film. Nobody knows what really happened to Amelia and Fred, but legends persist that they did manage to land somewhere unknown. Nova's allegorical lyrics imply by conjecture that the aircraft was out of fuel or a write-off.After all, in the film Earhart and Noonan do indeed land in places as yet unknown! Location titles solemnly inform viewers that they are in Pakistan, which did not exist until 1947, a decade after their global circumnavigation attempt, and also set them down in Mali, which was then no nation but a part of sprawling French West Africa. But these are quibbles.For all my reservations, I recommend "Amelia" not only to die-hard Earhart fans who will certainly be able to recognize her in Swank's well-prepared performance, but also to a broader audience that might be interested in a movie about a succession of some of the most daring aviation exploits of all time. Like I said, the film does manage to fly - but mainly when it's already airborne.

Last month I downloaded a copy of MS Flight Simulator and have been enjoying studying and flying vintage planes and recreating famous flights through the interface. I came cross Amelia's red Vega 2B and started a cross-Atlantic flight with it. Then later I ran across this movie...I cannot speak as an accomplished aviator or flight historian yet, but I did found the film to be refreshing and appropriate to its subject matter. Swank portrays A.E. well, and she does express the wonder of flying constantly through the film with a believable approach (and accent as well). Gere does similarly the same for Putnam and MacGregor acts as a good foil for him in Vidal. If you expect these actors to act like movie stars or action heroes, yes you will be disappointed (see some other reviews here).Several scenes of in-air cinematography are quite breathtaking and I was very pleased to see several of the planes from the program matching those on screen. There is also the angles of the first women in flight (and in new societal roles) that are also handled well and without pushing it "down out throats".If you are an aviation expert or pilot you may know much that is in this picture. But if you are like me, just getting into flying, I feel this movie is an excellent complement to your studies.

I recently bought a DVD of "Amelia," having read "The Sound of Wings," one of the two books about her life upon which the screenplay was based -- the other being "East to the Dawn." To summarize, it is the story of Amelia Earhardt, one of America's first women pilots and of her personal life and close relationship with G.P. Putnam, her husband, as she attempts to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, and the first woman to fly around the world. I must say, I was not disappointed with the film, in spite of the fact that I had heard a lot of comments about its being slow and boring. I found it to be a surprisingly accurate, though necessarily condensed, account of her career in aviation, including most of her record setting accomplishments, and thanks to Hilary Swank's and Richard Gere's true-to-life portrayals of Miss Earhardt and G.P. Putnam, a vibrant and very exciting movie. And this, in spite of the fact that it contained no explosions, no explicit sexual encounters, and only one bad word!Oh, I suppose that some might find it dull if they were not interested in Amelia Earhardt or aviation, or dreams. But personally, I found it to be inspiring.