Amelia [DVD]

Amelia [DVD] [2009]
Directed by Mira Nair

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£10.40 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
With her lanky Middle-America looks and her toothy grin, Hilary Swank is a natural fit for the adventurous figure of Amelia Earhart, the world's most famous aviatrix. Amelia ticks through the major achievements of Earhart's career: her 1928 flight across the Atlantic (as a passenger, not a pilot), which made her the first airborne woman to make the trip; more triumphantly, her 1932 solo transatlantic journey; her marriage to publisher George Putnam; and of course the mysterious 1937 around-the-world flight that ended in her vanishing, with engineer Fred Noonan, somewhere near Howland Island in the mid Pacific. With Swank in her pilot togs and director Mira Nair at the helm, the project would seem to have the ingredients for success, but the resulting film is a truly dull, almost featureless affair. The big flights themselves have innate appeal, but otherwise the emphasis is on Amelia's love life, shared between Putnam (Richard Gere) and the dashing Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor)--who, the film clumsily keeps reminding us, is the father of Gore Vidal, seen here as a precocious tyke. A smidgen of Amelia's proto-feminist attitude is included, including her intriguing take on her marriage agreement, but nothing actually cuts deep or generates interest. After a while Amelia becomes a series of events, told with less excitement than the average documentary on the same subject, albeit with prettier photography. --Robert Horton

Synopsis
Hilary Swank and Richard Gere star in director Mira Nair's biopic tracing the life of famed aviator Amelia Earhart -- who made history in 1932 by becoming the first woman ever to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip made the aviatrix a national celebrity -- with help from her publicist George Putnam (Gere), whom she fell in love with and eventually married. Their union was tested, however, as Earhart developed feelings for contemporary Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor ), and the couple's marriage faced the ultimate tragedy years later, as Earhart's fierce independent spirit spurred her to attempt to fly around the world -- a venture that infamously shrouded her in mystery, as the pilot simply vanished after crashing into the Pacific Ocean. Christopher Eccleston and Joe Anderson co-star in the Avalon Pictures production.

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