Great story + two marvelous actors + a brilliant director -= recipe for entertainment

Rating: 9/10 (19 July 2007)

Leonardo DiCaprio is the nemesis of an FBI agent, and vice versa, in "Catch Me If You Can," a 2002 film starring Tom Hanks and directed by Steven Spielberg. Based on a true story, DiCaprio is the young Frank Abagnale, a great impostor who teaches school, becomes a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer as he floats bad checks all over the country and seems to be impossible to capture.
The film is beautifully paced by Spielberg and absolutely fascinating as you wait and see what Abagnale is going to do next. When his father gets in trouble with the IRS, the family lifestyle changes, and Frank has to go to a public high school. He insists on wearing his private school jacket on his first day. He promptly takes over a French class as the substitute teacher and dismisses the real one, saying there must be a mistake. When he's discovered, his parents are called in. "Frank has been teaching French for the past week," the principal tells them. "Today he scheduled a field trip to a French bread-making factory. You see my problem." His father (Christopher Walken) admires his son's chicanery but refuses to take advantage of it, even as his financial state worsens.
Tom Hanks is Hanratty, the FBI agent who chases Abagnale all over the world. He is fabulous as a lonely, hard-working, insightful man who gets a call in his office from Frank every Christmas. "I know why you called me," he says to Frank. "You don't have anyone else to call." The two develop a strange bond. The baby-faced DiCaprio does a magnificent job as Frank. He's totally magnetic, charming, and also sad, exhibiting Frank's pain over his parents' divorce and his father's downfall. His goal is to get "everything back again" but then it becomes a game he can't quit. As his father, Walken is excellent as a proud man faced with the loss of his property, income, and family.
A well-cast, expertly directed film all the more intriguing since it's based on a true story. The opening scene is Frank Abagnale's appearance on "To Tell the Truth." We don't get to see if he fooled the audience, but he probably did - telling the truth is something Frank, while on the run, never did particularly well.