Catch Me If You Can (2002)

• Year: 2002
• Released: 25 Dec 2002
• Country: United States, Canada
• Adwords: Nominated for 2 Oscars. 16 wins & 46 nominations total
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Catch_Me_If_You_Can
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/catch-me-if-you-can
• Available in: 720p, 1080p,
• Language: English, French
• MPA Rating: PG-13
• Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
• Runtime: 141 min
• Writer: Jeff Nathanson, Frank Abagnale Jr., Stan Redding
• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken
• Keywords: biography, based on true story, based on a true story, fbi, con man,

	8.1/10
	75/100
	96% – Critics
	89% – Audience

Catch Me If You Can Storyline

New Rochelle, the 1960s. High schooler Frank Abagnale Jr. idolizes his father, who’s in trouble with the IRS. When his parents separate, Frank runs away to Manhattan with $25 in his checking account, vowing to regain dad’s losses and get his parents back together. Just a few years later, the FBI tracks him down in France; he’s extradited, tried, and jailed for passing more than $4,000,000 in bad checks. Along the way, he’s posed as a Pan Am pilot, a pediatrician, and an attorney. And, from nearly the beginning of this life of crime, he’s been pursued by a dour FBI agent, Carl Hanraty What starts as cat and mouse becomes something akin to father and son.

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Catch Me If You Can Movie Reviews

Incredibly watchable and enjoyable, but it really glorifies criminal behavior.

“Catch Me If You Can” is a very slickly made and entertaining film. It’s about a young guy who had a history of impersonating various careers…like Tony Curtis in “The Great Imposter”. If you watch it, you are almost guaranteed to like it as everything about the production is top notch. However, I should add one important thing. The main character is a criminal…a very bad man who hurt a lot of people….though the film makes him look pretty cool and clever. I’ve dealt with a man just like Frank from the film….and they aren’t cool but selfish and vicious. They are sociopaths who have no conscience and leave a LONG trail of injured people due to their behaviors. So, by all means watch the film but understand that there are a lot of imposters like this but there is no way they ever could have done what they did without hurting a lot of people….a lot….especially when they pretend to be doctors, dentists, psychologists, preachers and more.

Overall, an exceptionally directed and acted film, but one that might leave you with the impression that such individuals are not as harmful as they actually are. I would actually love to see a film like this that actually focuses much more on the hard the imposters have done instead of glorifying their misdeeds.

A film well worth catching

‘Catch Me if You Can’ has such a talented cast, the true story is a fascinating one and while Steven Spielberg is an inconsistent director he was a big childhood influence and he has proved several times that he is capable of masterpieces of iconic status.

While ‘Catch Me if You Can’ is not quite one of Spielberg’s best films (in a list that sees the likes of ‘Schindler’s List’, ‘Jaws’, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and ‘ET’), it is one of his better later films, for me that’s since ‘Schindler’s List’. There are occasional lapses into overly-sentimental schmaltz with the depiction of Abagnale’s family life, not the first or last time with Spielberg and a long way from the worst case, but that is the one fault that was had for me.

Spielberg directs impeccably, both in visual style and dramatic momentum, a directorial job that just screams of pure class. ‘Catch Me if You Can’ further benefits from as always beautiful cinematography from Janusz Kaminski and 60s period detail that not only looks sumptuously handsome but also evocative to make one think that it is more than just a film with a 60s setting.

John Williams’ score is not one of his best or most memorable, but still fits really well and has the right amount of slick jazziness, whimsy and understated pathos without over-emphasising (over-emphasis was the reason why his score for ‘Amistad’ was a rare misfire from him). The story takes a fascinating story and makes a ceaselessly engrossing film out of it, from the ingenious opening credits sequence to the heartfelt ending, the film is long but never feels it.

This is further helped by a script that has a deft mix of genuinely funny comedy, poignant emotional moments and nail-biting suspense. The characters are intriguing. Can’t praise the performances enough. Leonardo DiCaprio is movie star charisma personified, and brings wit, larceny and charm to a character that is a true crook in every sense but it is easy to see why one would fall for his actions.

It is easy to overlook Tom Hanks, due to the role being not as colourful or as showy, but he brings charismatic command, generosity and doggedness in a role that could have been really bland and annoying in lesser hands. Of a sterling supporting cast, Christopher Walken is especially superb, particularly in the latter parts of the film as his life is ruined. Martin Sheen and Amy Adams are memorable, and Nathalie Bye solid.

Overall, even if ‘Catch Me if You Can’ is not one of Spielberg’s masterpieces it is one of his better later films and one of his most purely enjoyable ones. Well worth catching. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Nyah, Nyah, you can’t catch me

Catch Me If You Can should be seen back to back with Tony Curtis’s performance in The Great Imposter. They are both excellent films and both deal with a protagonist who’s a brilliant and charming fellow and a quick study who masquerades in many disguises.

In The Great Imposter the whole story is told from Tony Curtis’s point of view. And it’s more lighthearted in its treatment of Ferdinand Waldo Demara than this is of Frank Abagnale, Jr. Curtis’s father Gary Merrill only has a few minutes in the beginning of The Great Imposter, but enough to establish the relationship there. Leonardo DiCaprio and Christopher Walken as son and father have a great deal more screen time together.

And of course in Catch Me If You Can we also have the point of view of the man trying to catch young Abegnale, FBI agent Tom Hanks. Remember this was the Sixties and J. Edgar Hoover was running the agency. Hanks is great as the uptight, buttondown agent in the Hoover mold. One of the best scenes in the film is DiCaprio conning Hanks out of an arrest by pretending to be a Secret Service Man and humiliating him in the process. He also turns Hanks into a man with a mission.

DiCaprio is a middle class kid from Westchester County whose father suffers some business reversals like Gary Merrill did in The Great Imposter. He refuses to accept a change in lifestyle and because he’s bright, he develops into a master check forger. He masquerades as an airline pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor and steals millions of dollars and lives high on the hog. Another scene I like is DiCaprio entertaining a high class model at a five star hotel and then we cut to Hanks doing his laundry at some cheap laundromat.

Steven Spielberg allowed Walken to develop his father character a whole lot more than Gary Merrill did in The Great Imposter. This man for whom the American Dream became a nightmare got a deserved Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

The Great Imposter with its accent on entertaining never allowed Tony Curtis to develop Demara’s character as DiCaprio did with Abegnale. Basically DiCaprio finds it easy to con people because people do want to believe the best in you. Ironically he develops a telephone relationship with his pursuer in the same way Curtis had with his parish priest, Karl Malden. The reason is simple, Hanks is the only guy who knows what makes him tick. And in the end Hanks is the guy who provides a useful outlet for DiCaprio’s talents.

I like the way Spielberg developed his characters in this film. We get good three dimensional portrayals from DiCaprio, Hanks and Walken. It’s a great film about another amazing adventure.