Amelia
(Mira Nair): Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor.
Running time: 111 minutes (PG)
Rating: 2/5

When Amelia Earhart landed her plane in Ireland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, she asked a farmer, "Where am I?" "You're in Flanagan's field. Where did you think you were?" "France." "Well, you missed it." Five years later, in 1937, Earhart disappeared over the Pacific attempting to circumnavigate the globe. Mira (Monsoon Wedding) Nair's biopic of the doomed aviatrix suffers the same problem Billy Wilder faced with Charles Lindberg's story in The Spirit of St Louis – flying was all that mattered to Earhart but being alone with her in the cockpit for long spells lacks drama, as does the unavoidable fact of knowing the ending from the start. Earhart was one of the first American icons to become a brand name with her own merchandising franchise, but in the end became a prisoner of her fame, "a white horse jumping through hoops". While Swank captures this poignancy of being killed by what she loved, Amelia lacks any real lift-off.