Catch Me If You Can is exactly the kind of movie you think it would be based on its story. It’s far from great but perfectly harmless; funny at times but knows when it can afford to be a little serious; very well acted and competently directed. There’s not a lot more you really need to know about this chronicle of the exploits of Frank Abagnale Jr., who conned millions of dollars and committed fraud on an extraordinary scale at a young age, all while evading the FBI throughout the 1960s -but I’m going to try.
Raised by a tax dodging father (Christopher Walken), Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) performs a series of successful cons as a teenager before his parents’ divorce provokes him to run away from home. Managing to get by on his cleverness, he soon impersonates a Pan Am pilot and begins forging cheques. An FBI operation led by Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) investigates these frauds and tries to catch him in a cat and mouse chase that spans years and continents.
Compared to Spielberg’s last couple movies there’s no flourish to Catch Me If You Can. Obviously it’s not a story that would necessitate or even warrant a stylized direction though. All it needs is to embody the carefree, smooth, but irresponsible nature of its lead character and charm its way through his craftiness and Hanratty’s beleaguered attempts to foil him. There’s nothing surprising in the direction or presentation of the plot at all, save for perhaps where it ends. The movie goes on too long for sure, more than a couple sequences deserving to be cut out, but it is nonetheless engaging in part due to the strength of its performances and a pretty good script by Jeff Nathanson. Though its use of a framing device telling the story from the point of Hanratty arresting Abagnale and returning him to the States is mostly pointless and a really strange choice by the filmmakers.
The movie portrays Abagnale in a likeable manner despite the scale of his crimes. It paints his quick-thinking and intelligence in an affable way and it’s fun to see him narrowly escape Hanratty’s grasp time and again. By giving the context of his background and point of view, as well as the fact he’s only a kid, the film manages to pull this off okay and luckily remembers to emphasize in moments how illegal his conning and forging is. Indeed, knowing what happens to Abagnale because of all this makes it easier to root for him until he gets caught. Leonardo DiCaprio also provides the characters’ much-needed vivacity and pathos. He’s clearly much too old for the part, something especially noticeable in the high school scenes, but he still plays it with apt enthusiasm and professionalism. The scenes which showcase his inexperience and ignorance are related exceptionally -he really comes off as in over his head when he’s visibly repelled by surgery while bluffing his way through being a doctor, having a liaison with a call girl played by Jennifer Garner, and is nearly caught up in his lies by his girlfriends’ father. It reinforces his naïvety and the danger of his continued scams.
Tom Hanks is great as the serious, almost humourless, frequently annoyed FBI fraud agent based on the real life Joseph Shea. It’s really interesting that after he spent most of the 90’s proving his capabilities as a dramatic actor, earning four of his five Oscar nominations (and both wins) in the previous decade, Hanks was comfortable returning to a largely comedic role for this film. And he really is funny throughout Catch Me If You Can, to the point I liked watching his performance more than DiCaprio, even though that one had more depth. Part of it is Hanks’ natural charisma and ability to bring out a strong personality in a character who wasn’t really written with one. There’s also something innately relatable in his exasperation at having to chase around this smarmy teenager and a satisfaction when he gets small victories over him. And though near the end Hanratty points out the thrill of being chased as Abagnale’s real motivation for his continual flights of fraud, I think he enjoys doing the chasing as well. The chemistry between the two isn’t bad either, and their future partnership is subtly built up through their exchanges.
Brenda Strong, Abagnale’s love interest when he impersonates a doctor, is played by Amy Adams in one of her earliest major roles, and it’s pretty clear why she became a star afterwards. Brenda’s pretty and innocent, but not incognizant or repressed. And it is a shame, though an understandable one, that they never reconnected after he had to flee their wedding. Martin Sheen is great as her imposing but romantic father, even if it is a waste of a talent like Martin Sheen. Nathalie Baye is very sympathetic as Paula Abagnale, Elizabeth Banks, like Adams, makes an early appearance here which is neat, the real Frank Abagnale Jr. makes a cameo; and then there’s the force of nature that is Christopher Walken. Walken isn’t nearly as outrageous in this movie as he is in others, but the bizarreness is still there and he doesn’t fail to hold your attention. He’s the lifelong huckster Frank seems to want to impress, and in this, there are a few genuinely serious moments between father and son, the best one being their last interaction before the wedding. At the same time Walken still makes the most out of that eccentric “mice falling into a bucket of cream” story.
Brenda Strong, Abagnale’s love interest when he impersonates a doctor, is played by Amy Adams in one of her earliest major roles, and it’s pretty clear why she became a star afterwards. Brenda’s pretty and innocent, but not incognizant or repressed. And it is a shame, though an understandable one, that they never reconnected after he had to flee their wedding. Martin Sheen is great as her imposing but romantic father, even if it is a waste of a talent like Martin Sheen. Nathalie Baye is very sympathetic as Paula Abagnale, Elizabeth Banks, like Adams, makes an early appearance here which is neat, the real Frank Abagnale Jr. makes a cameo; and then there’s the force of nature that is Christopher Walken. Walken isn’t nearly as outrageous in this movie as he is in others, but the bizarreness is still there and he doesn’t fail to hold your attention. He’s the lifelong huckster Frank seems to want to impress, and in this, there are a few genuinely serious moments between father and son, the best one being their last interaction before the wedding. At the same time Walken still makes the most out of that eccentric “mice falling into a bucket of cream” story.
It should come as a surprise to no one that Spielberg chooses to fixate on this troubled relationship (in truth, Abagnale never saw his father again after leaving home). The relationship between Frank Sr. and Jr. is one of the latter constantly trying to impress the former with his prospects and fortune, but when he does it doesn’t bring them any closer and in fact shows the young Frank who the old Frank has always been. It’s about seeking approval and realizing it isn’t important, and perhaps that’s never what you really wanted. The troubled paternal relationship theme is all over this movie, especially with divorce once again reeling its head. The effect the break-up has on young Frank is very explicit, and though it’s nowhere near as profoundly moving and isolating as in E.T. (which had the advantage of much younger children), it still conveys the devastation on the kid, especially one in Frank’s situation of having to choose which parent to stay with. You get this sense best near the end when the knowledge he can never have his family back (with his father dead and his mother remarried) prompts him to finally turn himself in. Hanratty is also divorced, he doesn’t see his wife and daughter as much as he’d like, and like his quarry, has no one else to talk to on Christmas Eve. He and Abagnale are very much connected by their loneliness, and there’s something melancholy in how three successive Christmases see both men alone. That final one in France where Abagnale is nearly out of money and a little mad, Hanratty calmly trying to persuade him to surrender through what seems certainly a bluff might be the movies’ most effective scene, illustrating where con artistry and over-confidence lead.
If there’s any noteworthy aesthetic appeal to Catch Me If You Can, it’s the constant evocation of the 1960s. From the fun Saul Bass inspired opening credits sequence (the poster should also have been done in this style) to the 60’s iconography in the clothes, magazines, televisions, etc.; the references to cultural markers like Dr. Kildare, Perry Mason, and The Flash comic books, which inspires Abagnale’s early false identity as Barry Allen, to the musical choices including a somewhat anachronistic “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Come Fly With Me”. Spielberg, Janusz Kaminski, John Williams (whose score has a conscious Mancini vibe), and the cast all work really hard to replicate the atmosphere of the time, and they do so pretty well.
Like I said, everything about this movie is done pretty well, if not in any way particularly unique or unconventional. It’s one of Spielberg’s most perfectly “fine” movies, an interesting story with some good performances, chuckles, and light thrills along the way. Abagnale himself, who by all accounts is a really nice guy, had no problems with the film, while acknowledging its liberties, and even approved of the one regarding him and his father. The liberties taken in Spielberg’s next movie would be much more severe but much more welcome as well.
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