Captivating DiCaprio, engaging story

Rating: Null/10 (30 December 2002)

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (2002) **** Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Christopher Walken, Martin Sheen, Nathalie Baye, Amy Adams, James Brolin, Frank John Hughes, Brian Howe, John Finn, Jennifer Garner. DiCaprio gives a grandly charming performance as Frank Abagnale, Jr. a teenager who adopted the professional guises of airplane pilot, physician and lawyer to front his check kiting schematic modus operandi during the 1960s and eventually making the FBI's most wanted list by bilking millions until his capture and imprisonment. Based on Abagnale's best-selling memoir and adapted with lean storytelling by Jeff Nathanson, the film never lets up in the giddy cat-and-mouse/Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote relationship between fugitive DiCaprio and amalgamated FBI square Hanks (replete with thick as clam chowder Boston accent, dorky specs and porkpie hat) one step behind his two-steps ahead prey and a unique dynamic of a father/son esthetic. Walken gives an Oscar worthy supporting turn as the elder Abagnale whose financial woes and tanglement with the IRS acts as his son's catalyst. Once again filmmaker Steven Spielberg makes popular entertainment into a work of art.