*** (out of ****)
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Natalie Baye, Amy Adams, James Brolin, and Martin Sheen
Directed by Steven Spielberg & written for the screen by Jim Nathanson, from the book by Frank Abagnale, Jr. and Stan Redding
2002 PG13
The phone rings and it�s someone with a wrong number. A woman asks for Daryl, or Fred, or someone else that doesn�t live here. For a split second I�m tempted to say �that�s me� and just see what happens. Real-life con man Frank Abagnale Jr. essentially did just that, except with jobs, checks, even a fianc�, and lived the sweet life for several years before finally being apprehended for fraud. Before he turned twenty he had passed himself as a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer, and a pilot. He did all these things not so much by forging documents but by being affable, modest, and by guessing exactly how people expect a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, or a pilot to act. Steven Spielberg�s �Catch Me If You Can� is a playful romp about seventeen-year-old Frank�s exploits, but it�s also an intriguing, albeit breezy, examination of how much of our social fabric is held together simply by the idea that if you act a certain way, you must have a certain job.
Spielberg wisely does not try to justify Frank�s behavior, but we do like Frank (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) because he is not really a bad boy. He is not diabolical, he has no masterplan, and he�s not trying to hurt anybody. Inventiveness and problem-solving are his two favorite pastimes, and, believe me, most of the teenagers I meet only think hard when they want to get out of doing something. For Frank, the world is a puzzle just waiting to be solved, and when he does solve a little piece of it, he seems to smirk at himself with child-like glee. Look at what I got away with, he seems to be saying. When we see his check-forging apparatus, it involves putting toy planes in the tub so that he can transfer their insignias to fake checks. The entire affair looks more like a model airplane kit than fraud.
Giving the movie greater depth is Christopher Walken as Frank�s father, Frank Sr., who is something of a con man himself, but one who has never succeeded on the scale of his son. He is an admirable father in many respects, long-suffering the infidelities of his wife and his troubles with the IRS. He is both proud and defeated, and develops a mantra with his boy in which they relive the same proud moments from Frank Sr.�s past. At first he can�t help laughing at his son�s ingenuity, but his heart breaks when Frank Jr. becomes wanted by the law.
The law drives a wedge between father and son, and since there is no one else with whom Frank Jr. can share the truth, he begins to form a friendship with the FBI agent (Tom Hanks) who is trailing him. Unlike Frank�s own father, Hanks is an upstanding example of 1950s virtue: honest, hard-working, and a straight-shooter. Puffy with fat, he wears a cheap suit, big glasses, buttons down his collar, and works on Christmas Eve. Hanks never lies to Frank, no matter how often Frank lies to Hanks, and the G-man becomes the kind of authority figure Frank never quite found in his own father.
Spielberg�s style is conventional and energetic without ever drawing attention to itself. Alongside Michael Curtiz and Howard Hawks, Spielberg is one of the greatest �invisible� directors of all time, and that suits �Catch Me If You Can.� Not every movie needs to be packed with self-conscious camera angles and constant reminders about the fa�ade of filmmaking. The movie is filled with period detail, but not overwhelmed by it; we feel this could all happen in our own time as well as the Eisenhower years. The black-suited FBI men come to represent adult responsibility more than governmental authority, and Spielberg has some fun with the goofy way G-men in the �50s and �60s held their revolvers like dueling sabers.
�Catch Me If You Can� ends in the best possible way, not only with justice being served, but with Frank being genuinely rehabilitated. The G-men in black do not squelch his boyish creativity so much as harness it to society�s benefit. At the film�s end, Frank is working alongside the FBI to catch check frauds; his spirit is not crushed so much as matured, although there are certainly hints that he wouldn�t mind playing some more with the holes in the social fabric.
Finished March 27th, 2003
Copyright � 2003 Friday & Saturday Night