We have met the enemy and he is us

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2003)

A game show, To Tell the Truth, opens the film Catch Me If You Can, a beguiling new comedy by Steven Spielberg. Three men, each wearing a pilot's uniform, appear on stage purporting to be the authentic Frank Abagnale Jr., a con man and impersonator who eluded the FBI from 1964 to 1966 until he was captured when he was only 19. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the real Abagnale, while the others are simply pretenders.
Based on a book by Abagnale and Stan Redding, Catch Me If You Can is breezy entertainment served up with big bucks written all over it. Big name stars, popular director, sympathetic criminals, and John Williams' great jazz score, all that glitters in Tinseltown. It asks to be taken at face value and does not aspire to any great heights or depths -- there are no intimate revelations of a man's soul. Told in extended flashbacks, the film describes Abignale's exploits as he pretended to be a schoolteacher, airline pilot, doctor, and lawyer, and, in the process, cashed more than $2.5 million in fraudulent checks. His feats were ostensibly in reaction to the impending divorce of his parents, but while the real Frank Abagnale has said that he did it mostly for money, power, and women, Spielberg's Frank is just an innocent child trying to put his family back together.

After the game show, the scene flashes to Frank being escorted to an American prison by FBI agent Carl Hanratty, played by Tom Hanks, who has to force a self-conscious Boston accent throughout the film. Flashing back again to 1963 in New Rochelle, N.Y., where Frank's father, Frank Abagnale, Sr., played by Christopher Walken in one of his better performances, finds himself in trouble with the IRS (we never find out the substance of this trouble). In reaction to his father's woes, Frank Jr. shows his mettle early on, impersonating a substitute teacher at his new school with rare authority (I never had a substitute teacher that convincing). At first, dad shows a fatherly admiration and concern, but that changes later. When his parents go through a divorce, Junior runs away from home, taking with him only the checkbook his father gave him on an account containing $25. He learns pretty fast that a bounced personal check will not help much, but a fake company check from Pan Am Airlines will do wonders. Now all he needs is a new pilot's uniform and he's got money to spend and girls chasing him by the bucket full.
Frank moves on from one impersonation to another. He eventually turns minor check fraud into an entire lifestyle of false identities and counterfeit checks and ends up on the FBI's ten most wanted list. It's a lot of fun watching the FBI dufuses giving chase. They look right, but never seem to know what they're doing, and Hanratty falls for Abagnale's cons on more than one occasion. The well-meaning but bumbling Hanratty is always hot on his trail, closing in but never making the kill. Catch Me if You Can has a somewhat surreal look, with a feeling of heightened reality and brightened colors. Underneath the veneer, however, is a view of the 60s as unreal as is Far From Heaven's view of the 50s. The movie wants us to know that "in those days" a scam artist could get away with everything because we were so naïve and so trusting, and a smart scammer could take advantage of the way banks and businesses were willing to cash checks for anyone who looked respectable.
Of course we are way more grown up now. Now fraud and deception is only carried out at the highest levels, beyond the light-hearted cameras of Mr. Spielberg. Abagnale is the perfect American entrepreneur, inventing a whole new species of criminality for the rest of us to admire. He is the movie version of everyman, a con artist in a society uncertain of its values. We admire people like him because he stands outside the system and, like the Mafiosos we pay homage to in our popular culture, has turned criminality into an art form and added a little charm. There is little difference between him and the FBI agents who use illegal methods to spy on civilians, corporation executives that make millions on questionable stock options, political leaders who try to convince us of the necessity of war, or ballplayers who use steroids to bolster their mediocre abilities. The only difference between them and Frank Abagnale is that their stories have no sex appeal and would be of limited interest to Steven Spielberg.

Abagnale, confidently interpreted by DiCaprio, is, on the surface, the epitome of cool, yet underneath he is just as hollow as the society that elevates individuals without integrity into folk heroes. Just like our corporate executives, our advertising promoters, and some political leaders, Abagnale demonstrates the sharpness of a quick-change artist who snuggles his way into our confidence, exhibiting smooth-talking sincerity while camouflaging his lies and deceptions. Unwittingly, Catch Me If You Can has shown us the true culprit. Yes Pogo, we have met the enemy and he is us.