Martin Scorsese maintains his style in this grand production: (1) starting the plot from details to the whole (close ups of kid Hughes during bathing at the opening sequence) in narrative structure; (2) use of narrators' voice-over (newsmen's voice on the radio) to expound contextual factors in story progression; (3) use of inter-titles and on-screen sign-displays to function as title cards for locating the spatial and temporal dimension in narrative; (4) adoption of mobile framing, oval camera tracking and crane shots to maintain continuity (instead of merely relying on editing) and (5) shots of non-frontality.

The film in rhetoric appraises Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio)'s adventurism and renders a sympathy to his eccentric behaviour. The first half is fast paced and the second slow with more detailed portrayal of Hughes' eccentric behaviour arising from mental illness. A symmetrical ending in narrative resorting to the same spatial and time orientation (Hughes' childhood bathing) in the prologue and epilogue (in an extreme close-up of Hughes' eyes) seems to convey a balanced positive view on the eccentric person. Nevertheless, while the narrative on the intensification of Hughes' sickness is detailed and communicative, its cause is only nudged in a covert and crude manner.

In film language, Scorsese adopts parallelism in both narrative and visuals to depict
Hughes' life at two different times. Scorsese manipulates the prophetic use of motif in the first sequence by invoking dialogues "quarantine" and "you are not safe" to foretell the audience that the life of Howard Hughes is both sick-bounded and extraordinary. While the range of information despatched is unrestricted, the depth of information entails both objective and subjective elements as Scorsese sporadically positions the camera from the mind of Hughes to create either his POV shots or a flashback of his childhood bathing (the epilogue). The extreme close-ups and exaggerated sound of reporters' camera flashbulbs serve the same function in being the visual and sound motifs to compare Hughes' various achievements and setbacks in his life.

In terms of cinematography, editing and the adherence to the continuity system, the camera crosses the axis of action in an early sequence of Hughes' private studio (conversation between Hughes and Noah (John Reilly)), seemingly adding a connoted layer of narrative on Hughes' sophisticated ideas about his movie business. Scorsese also adopts graphic match (Hughes's hand on Hepburn (Cate Blanchett)'s back cut into his hand on the side panel of an airplane in another locale) to connote the equivalence of women and air adventure in the mind of the millionaire. The high angle shots of the sick Hughes and the low angle shots of Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), Pan Am's CEO, in the latter sequence portray the former's loss of prowess to manage his situation. A visual (also narrative) parallel is established in the latter sequence of the seriously mentally sick Hughes with soliloquy and the film "Hell's Angel" shown (the same sequence shown previously when he is ambitious of his movie business in the early part of the story) in his private studio.

The film also witnesses other obtrusive visual techniques, most notably split screen, fading-in images and wide camera movements. Pop music, often diegetic, is used in a relatively high volume in the first half of the film to synchronize the narrative with the energetic Hughes and his flagrant movie business whereas subdued non-diegetic music replaces the tone in the second half when his illness begins to ruin his life.

The film is an epic biopic of an eccentric business adventurer in the aviation history of the States and the globe at large. It is produced with an abundance of filmic substances though the theme of adventurism, insistence and endeavours downplays Hughes' bads by adopting a sympathetic view to his mental sickness. The movie is good because of two gurus, Howard Hughes and Martin Scorsese.