Flashback Corner--Catch Me if You Can

 

“No, no, no, you, you do not feel sorry for me.  The truth is… I knew it was you, now maybe I didn’t get the cuffs on you, but I knew.”

 

          After “Saving Private Ryan” Steven Spielberg directed a string of movies that had some people believing that he was losing his touch.  Oh yeah, he’s still a phenomenal visual storyteller, and he can get those emotional beats as if he directed “E.T.” last year, but when people look at “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, “Minority Report”, “The Terminal”, “War of the Worlds”, “Munich”, and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” it’s a little easy to see what people are talking about.  Something seems like it is missing.  But there is a film mixed in that bunch that I feel was short changed.  And that’s 2002's “Catch Me if You Can” starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a young con man on the run from the law, led by Tom Hanks.

Based on the true story of Frank Abagnale Jr. who before he turned 19 posed as a doctor, a lawyer, and a pilot for Pan Am.  He was able to forge checks so well, that he acquired millions of dollars over the course of a few years, and conned almost everyone he met.  Hot on his seemingly cold trail was Carl Hanratty a FBI bank fraud agent.  When Frank’s family begins to fall apart because of financial hardship, he runs away and uses his natural skill and older looks to survive and begins to live well beyond his means.  Meanwhile his mother moves on with her life and his father becomes a casualty of his financial situation.  Christopher Walken plays the elder Abagnale Sr. and kills it in every scene he’s in, a part of me wishes he was a central point of the film, however this is Frank Jr.’s story and Dicaprio at least in my mind shed any ounce of “Titanic” off of him for me in this film.  It also ushered him into the world of Scorsese where he has done some of his best work.  Here in “Catch Me if You Can” you see him transform from young and reckless to aged and experienced.  It is a tremendous film and belongs up there with Spielberg’s greats.

If you re-watch the film you will see the classic Spielberg tropes, not just the great close-ups and almost perfectly framed shots, but his views on youth and the innocence of the time, not so much the naiveté, though some of the characters come off that way.  You see the broken homes, like in “E.T.”, “Close Encounters”, and “Hook” (another underrated gem).  You can hear an outstanding score by John Williams that is jazzy and very Mancini-inspired.  And this is truly the best thing screenwriter Jeff Nathanson has ever written.  Mostly though what you will see is that Steven Spielberg has never lost the ability to give us fantastic moving pictures.  There is always something to love in everything he does.  Some are scenes, and moments, but here, he spins magic, and just because it’s not the wonder of unknown alien life or a rollercoaster of ride with the man in the fedora, it shouldn’t be ignored.

 

--Robert L. Castillo