Catch Me If You Can
In the mid-to-late 1960s, Frank William Abagnale Jr. ran a fraudulent-check scheme. He conned the United States of America and 26 foreign countries out of $2.5 million in five years. Who cares, right? Abagnale's not the only con artist in history, so why is he so spectacular that Steven Spielberg made a movie about his schemes? It could be that Abagnale began his fraudulent-check cashing when he was only 16 years old! Catch Me If You Can, directed by said cinematic genius, tells the story of one of the most successful, and youngest, con artists ever.
Frank Jr.'s (Leonardo DiCaprio) early adolescence is not a particularly happy one. His parents divorce after Frank Sr. finds out that his wife opens her legs for his best friend. All his life, Frank Jr. watches his father work hard to keep a stationery store open, only to be given the high hard one by the IRS. The genesis of Frank's scheme occurs when a hotel bank declines his personal check but reveals that they accept payroll checks from a certain airline. Our protagonist then forges a check suitable for the hotel.
To keep the cash flowing, Frank poses as a commercial co-pilot. Over the next few years, he also poses as a doctor, a lawyer, and other professions to keep the scam working. On Frank's heels is FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks). Special Agent Hanratty is on a mission to bust this crafty con artist. The rest of this film is told as a lighthearted cat-and-mouse quasi-suspenseful comedy-drama.
A common complaint about Catch is that it's too long. The total runtime is 2 hours 20 minutes. All of the scenes relate to the main plot in some way or another; however, Mr. Spielberg could have shaved 30 minutes of footage without sacrificing continuity. In the comedy-drama genre, a slow pace can yield a bored audience.
The performances by the two leading actors are solid. "Leo" may prove (at least to me) to be more than a girly-man whose film career is based solely on his looks. Tom Hanks plays his most serious, no-nonsense character ever. This is even more impressive after considering his performances in Volunteers and Bachelor Party.
Kudos to the screenwriters and the two stars for setting up a developed, but modest, contrast between Carl Hanratty and Frank Abagnale Jr.! Frank is smooth and charismatic, while Carl is grave to the point of having no friends or family. Frank enjoys life, but Carl seems to live only for his work. There is one noticeable similarity between the characters: wits. Frank uses them to elude the authorities, and Carl uses them to piece together Frank's identification and method of operation.
Imagine my surprise when I heard that Leonardo DiCaprio was going to star in two motion pictures for the Christmas season, each helmed by a major director. I thought (read: hoped) he would disappear from film forever after the visually beautiful and pointless dud, The Beach. Apparently, his career is not (horrible pun alert) washed up after all.
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This film neither shows nor inspires drinking.
A few sex scenes comprises all of the romance in Catch.
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