Amelia (2009)

Hilary Swank as the famous female pilot Amelia Earhart, this is the biopic of her rise to stardom and eventual final voyage. You have Richard Gere as her agent and eventually her husband and you follow their relationship as much as Amelia wanting to fly and achieve for women everywhere what she did. With a support cast of Christopher Eccleston and Ewan McGregor this is quite a strong cast for a film that did not really hit my radar when it came out.

I am not a fan of biopic films that chart the lives of real people as you know where it is going and therefore it is about the journey rather than the destination and I think that many film makers find it hard to achieve this in an interesting and meaningful way. I have to be honest and say I knew with a passing reference the name of Amelia Earhart and what happened to her at the end but had no knowledge about her rise to fame and this film did not ignite my interest to find out more. While I appreciated that she struggled to find a place in what was and still is a male dominated world there was nothing in this portrayal that made me think, wow, what are they not telling us or showing us.

The acting in this is fine, I am not a fan of Hilary Swank but she was believable as a strong minded woman who finds her passion and from other portrayals she was very different so shows she can change what and who she is on screen but there was no charisma there for me. Nothing drew me to her and how and why she and Richard Gere ended up together was a mystery that I could not fathom out other than that was what happened. The rest of the acting and the effects were fine and it is 5 out of 10 but I cannot recommend this to you, unless you love the main actors or the story of Amelia Earhart.