Interesting But Not Fascinating

Rating: 7/10 (25 December 2002)

Steven Spielberg's entertaining chase comedy/drama features a couple of very fine performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks as a forger who travels the world and the FBI agent determined to haul him in. Based on the true story of Frank Abagnale Jr., it fits nicely into the Spielberg canon of films about splintered families; Abagnale's underlying motivations concern his determination to recover what the I.R.S. has taken from his tax-evading father and, in the process, repair his broken home. Though it's an interesting story, it's not an extremely fascinating one: once Spielberg and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson have set up the basic scams Abagnale operates, there's a lot of repetition over the first three-quarters of the film's 140 minutes (the action could have been pared a bit in the editing room) and it refreshes only in the final section, where Hanks overtly assumes the role of surrogate father to DiCaprio's needy child. After a couple of moody, personal science fiction films in "Artificial Intelligence: AI" and "Minority Report", Spielberg seems intent on losing himself in a wistfully retro action story--the film takes place in the Sixties but a Kennedy-era-innocent Sixties that seems cloistered from the events we've chosen to make iconic--but he's unable to let go of his dark side (he's probably incapable of ever making an `E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial' again) and the film wallows in its unhappiness. But he's energized by the engrossing lead performances that dominate everything around them: as people consumed by the actions of escaping and capturing, DiCaprio and Hanks lock into each other and the relationship they form subtlety invites the viewer into their game; Spielberg wisely allows the actors to interpret the material directly and keeps the pressure off the audience by making everything clear and digestible. With Nathalie Baye, Martin Sheen and Christopher Walken, amusing and intelligent as Abagnale's father. The harsh sunlit cinematography is by Janusz Kaminski and the cleverly mod production design is by Jeannine Claudia Oppewall. John Williams' unassuming, jazzy score is surprisingly good, considering the source.