USA, PG-13, 141 m, 2002
Directed by Steven Spielberg. Stars Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christopher Walken, et al. 

Steven Spielberg is the cinema’s greatest storyteller. He’s also its most reliable craftsman. I can’t conceive of another director (with the possible exception of Alfred Hitchcock) who can tout such a consistently excellent body of work. Although his visual sense remains without peer (he has the eye of a silent filmmaker), it never serves to distract us from the central action, which many film-school show-offs like Darren Aronofsky and the Wachowski Brothers should take note of. Catch Me if You Can isn’t among Spielberg’s more ambitious offerings, but it has an agreeable hum, and you’re happy to roll right along with it. 

On the debit side, Catch Me if You Can is woefully deterministic in its worldview. It cheerfully romanticizes an unprincipled felon, dumping on us a couch-load of pop-psychobabble in an attempt to explain why its protagonist turned to a life of unlawful activities. The film doesn’t hold its anti-hero accountable for his actions, rather it commemorates his deceitful machinations, which is startling when you consider how morally grounded Spielberg’s preceding films were. Catch Me if You Can is so full of excuses for its law-breaking leading man that its bound to drive even the most slothful of Existentialists up a wall.   

Based upon the real-life story of ill-famed quacksalver Frank Abagnale Jr., Catch Me if You Can spins such a fantastic yarn that it firmly corroborates the old adage that “truth is stranger than fiction.” After a snappy animated title sequence that recalls the celebrated manner of designer Saul Bass, the movie proper directs us to a tidily transmogrified mid-‘60s suburb in New Rochelle. High-schooler Frank (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) is the sole offspring of a minor-league businessman, Frank Sr. (Christopher Walken), who isn't above an innocuous grift himself to get whatever his family needs. But Frank Sr. is having difficulties with the IRS, and his financial improprieties soon catch up with him, wrecking his marriage to an adulterous French belle (Nathalie Baye) that he brought back to the states after World War II. When Frank learns of his parents’ plan to separate, he elects to run away to Manhattan with only a few bucks in a checking account that his beloved pop opened for him. But once his meager savings are used up, he starts kiting bad checks, and eventually winds up swindling countless banks out of millions of dollars in some twenty-six countries by posing as a Pan Am pilot. As the years go by, Frank passes himself off as the head of a hospital ER to win the affections of a young naïf (Amy Adams), and eventually as a lawyer to help gain the approval of her legal-beagle dad (Martin Sheen)—all the while eluding the pesky FBI agent on his tail (Tom Hanks). 

Hanks’ Agent Carl Hanratty is relentless in his pursuit of the young con—he’s Samuel Gerard to DiCaprio’s Richard Kimble. Hanratty is a first-rate civil servant, but the movie paints him as a repressed square who’s secretly living vicariously through his high-flying quarry. (We’re prompted to cheer whenever Abagnale gives him the slip.) But those of us in the audience that have ever been swindled by a deceitful jerk like Frank will not find his antics all that cute, and will opt to root for the Hanks character instead.  Hanratty does eventually catch Frank, and sends him up the river for an extended period. But when Hanratty’s superiors learn what a keen eye Frank has for spying phony checks, they release him for the pokey and give him a job in the bureau with the check forgery division. Frank is too daft to appreciate what a major break he’s getting, so he plans to escape the States by posing yet again as an airline pilot. But Frank’s conscience finally gets their better of him, and he returns to the bureau, where he continues to work to the present day. The closing title cards tell us that he’s since been instrumental in apprehending a myriad of check forgers over the years, but what I’d rather know is if he ever had to pay restitution to the untold thousands of folks he duped. (The movie’s need to inform us of the all the good that has since come from Frank’s nefarious antics is akin to the way that Bugsy filled us in on how the success of Las Vegas was attributable to the blood-soaked ambitions of Ben Siegel—it was a fatuous petition, insisting that we excuse the gangster for his murderous, double-dealing ways.) The real Frank Abagnale, Jr. was compensated for his life story over twenty-five years ago, and when the book based upon it became a surprise best seller, he enjoyed a little bit of notoriety. With the release of this film version of Catch Me if You Can, Frank is basking in celebrity once again, but what kind of message does this send to kids? 

Catch Me if You Can would like us to believe that Frank’s chronic chicanery is a misguided attempt to become the successful man that his father fell short of, but the whole thesis feels disingenuous. Despite Frank’s resourcefulness as a con, he’s really just big nothing, a Zelig who assumes different guises just to fit in and win the affections of those around him. He’s a maddeningly shallow poseur, a superficial fake. Believe it of not, there was a time in America when airline pilots were akin to rock stars in their appeal to swooning lassies, yet there’s something loathsome about the way Frank capitalizes on it. (His grinning charlatanism disparages all the hard work these guys have to go through to acquire a license.) Though Frank wallows in a circle that he doesn’t deserve to be a part of, Spielberg expects us to empathize with the character, explaining that his roguish shenanigans are merely the outgrowth of family turmoil. Spielberg was himself a child of divorce, and judging by the subtext of E.T., Empire of the Sun and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it traumatized the director. Catch Me if You Can is Spielberg’s most overt treatment on the subject of parental separation, but it affects an ingratiating tone, making its pitch appear even more desperate.  Catch Me if You Can is lots of fun while you’re watching it, but it becomes almost annoying upon reflection. The problem with the picture is almost entirely thematic. Strip away its subtext, and you’re left with an inconsequential caper flick, albeit one that’s pretty well made.    

January 24, 2003

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.