Movie Review - 'Amelia' circles but is sadly off-course

Considering the risks Amelia Earhart took, losing her life in the call of aviation, Hilary Swank and director Mira Nair don't put much on the line in their film biography "Amelia."

Swank and Nair play it safe to the point of benumbing this woman's life, leaving Earhart as remote and muted as she is in the black-and-white photos and news footage of the aviator included at the film's end.

"Amelia" is a biopic on autopilot. We get the facts of Earhart's pioneering achievements, her marriage to her promoter (Richard Gere), her fling with a fellow pilot (Ewan McGregor). And we get pretty pictures of airplanes in flight.

But this dowdy movie rarely embodies Earhart's passions, whether for flying or for the men in her life.

Much of the fault lies in the screenplay by Ron Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, a script remarkably based on not one, but two Earhart biographies.

In stumbling, choppy fashion, the movie intercuts between Earhart's doomed last flight around the world in 1937 and the achievements leading up to it over the previous decade – her Atlantic and Pacific crossings, her mentoring of female fliers, her efforts to establish regional passenger shuttle service.

Lovely aerial images, lush landscapes and rich sets and costumes are the film's lone strengths. In almost every other regard, "Amelia" veers off course.

All the other components for an engaging chronicle are there. A grand life that ends in tragedy and epic mystery. Period drama that offers the chance to craft glorious images and play puppetmaster for fascinating characters. A filmmaker in Nair ("Monsoon Wedding," "Mississippi Masala") who has a keen feel for bold women and zestful lives.

A sturdy supporting cast includes Christopher Eccleston, as the navigator who disappeared with Earhart on her final flight over the Pacific, and Cherry Jones, who briefly enlivens the film as Eleanor Roosevelt on a night flight with Earhart.

"Amelia" flirts with potentially interesting aspects of Earhart's story. Sadly, these moments are tossed in to no purpose, like stuffy airport layovers in really interesting destinations you wish you had the time to go out and explore.