She was, for a time, the most famous woman in the world, even, in the 1930s, more famous than Eleanor Roosevelt. She was then and for all time, Amelia Earhart, (the toothsome Hilary Swank) the daring, boyish, aviatrix, adventurer and first woman to cross the Atlantic on wings. In "Amelia," directed by Mira Nair ("Monsoon Wedding," "Namesake,") Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan, have forged a basic screenplay largely taken from two books, "East to The Dawn" and "The Sound of Wings." It cements itself to the story of Amelia and publisher and egocentric salesman G. Putnam, whose company published the Lindbergh story. We get all the escapades, the luck and loves, the near disasters, ticker-tape parades and finally, the last hours of her life, when she and her navigator Fred Noonan make a run at a round-the- world flight and disappear into the murky waters of the Pacific. There have been many legends grown up around Amelia and that disappearance on July 2, 1937. There were clues found on various small atolls that might have shown that she and Noonan survived the initial crash, but it all amounted to little.

Amelia was not the first American feminist, if she was at all. She too had her bouts with egomania. But surely she was the strongest, the most visible. To finance her flights, she made commercials for everything from chewing gum to clothes to waffle irons, and she hated all of it. But it was all insisted on by publisher George Putnam (Richard Gere), who saw in her the next great American heroine, and his next wife. Putnam was in the huckster grande business. He had already published the life of Charles Lindbergh, a man he knew personally and thought "pompous and boring."

Over all, "Amelia" is beautifully photographed with sweeping aerial shots of all that Amelia saw: the great cloud masses, the boiling ocean, fields and forests of her childhood and finally, the vast sparkling Pacific that she and Noonan (a very good low keyed performance by Christopher Eccleston) saw as they began to run out of gas.

Unlike other film biographies of Amelia, this one zeros in on her personal life, particularly her romance with the famous founder of TWA, Gene Vidal, (Ewan McGregor) father of the great playwright and novelist Gore Vidal. The film, unlike others, makes clear that Amelia was truly a free spirit, who wrote a contract establishing that personal freedom with Putnam, before she would marry him. She even halted the wedding ceremony to ask the stunned minister to omit the word "obey" from the text.

It's safe to say that Swank was the perfect choice for Amelia. The resemblance is ghostly, and she apparently worked very hard on the mannerisms and physical moves. Swank lost weight for the movie and slides in and out of Earhart's famous slacks and leather flight suits with ease. Still, having grown up watching newsreels of Amelia, I'll bet Amelia would have killed to have Swank's teeth and that fabulous smile.

All of this, of course, made easier by the fact that there are hundreds of those old newsreels for her to study. But she does it flawlessly, albeit comes out a tad wooden in her relationship scenes. But many say that truly was Amelia. Gene Vidal famously said to his son that he loved Amelia, but didn't want to "marry a boy." Make of that what you will.

"Amelia" has everything a big screen biography requires, splendid photography, color and a big name star. I have never been a fan of Gere, who here, gives his signature stolid performance with the crunchy boyish grin and shuffle walk. And when the tense moments, the waiting and fearful moments pop up, Gere fails to deliver anything of depth. He could spend more time watching old Sean Penn films and less with the Dali Lama.

We should add that there was another film biography of Amelia in 1943, but under the silly assumed name of Tonie Carter, played by Rosalind Russell and starring Fred McMurray, in a film called "Flight For Freedom." I miss Fred McMurray.

J.P. Devine is a former stage and screen actor.