Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2010

Amelia: ©2009 Twentieth Century Fox

Aviatrix Amelia Earhart was one of the most exciting people of the 20th century. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, a pioneering feminist and a Depression-era inspiration. So a greater mystery than her disappearance over the South Pacific in 1937 is how talented director Mira Nair could have turned out this tedious, dramatically inert and earthbound chronicle that’s more suitable to the history classroom than the theater. Never gets off the ground. Hilary Swank, a dead ringer for the heroine, and Richard Gere, as husband George Putnam, fail to shake the impression that they’re acting.