“Amelia” has magnificent period settings and airplanes and majestic aerial photography. It boasts the two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, perfectly cast as groundbreaking pilot Amelia Earhart, with Richard Gere as Earhart’s promoter-publisher husband, George Putnam. They even have nice onscreen chemistry.

But Mira Nair’s big-screen “Amelia” is one thing Earhart was not — safe. It’s sometimes moving and occasionally even thrilling and poetic. It never, however, truly takes flight. The film focuses on the public-era Earhart and the romantic Earhart. She was built for fame — with Jazz Age flapper looks, a media-friendly manner and a name ready-made for the kind of celebrity that followed.

Nair frames the story within flashbacks, various stages of Amelia’s final, fateful round-the-world flight. In less than two hours, Nair deals with that first blush of fame, then Amelia’s solo Atlantic flight into legend, her alleged love affair with Gore Vidal’s dad, Gene (Ewan McGregor), and her rivalry with younger pilot Elinor Smith (Mia Wasikowska). That compactness forces Nair to deal too literally with events and elements of Earhart’s life and legend.

But Swank does wonders in capturing the essence of this woman so far ahead of her time. She has the right freckled, rawboned look, and she built on that to show a feisty, sexy and capable woman with a touch of the gambler about her. The lady earned her wings, and Swank, especially, more than does right by both the woman and the legend.