Great Film

Rating: Null/10 (4 August 2004)

I am not a huge Spielberg fan but I think he has made some of his best work to date in the last couple of films he has made. Minority Report was surprisingly very good and Catch Me If You Can was just excellent.
Touching upon a story like Frank Abergnale's is very daring as he had never done anything like this before. He knows about War, UFO's and Sharks but this is more of a story than special effects which Spielberg usually don's on.
Frank Abergnale is a young man in a broken family. His Father Frank Abergnale Sr played wonderfully by Christopher Walken is somebody who has never been able to grab something and keep hold of it. He is bankrupt and can't do anything without the finance people picking up on it first and he feels he has disappointed his son in showing him how it is done. Frank Jr played by Leonardo Di Caprio is fed up of family life as all his parents ever do is argue. Frank decides to leave home and live his life in a way that we all want to. He is clever, good looking, charming and very much a con man in every way by interoperating a Air Line Pilot, a Lawyer and a Doctor. After a while of partying and enjoying a life which is really a fake it doesn't take long for the FBI to be on his trail led by Carl Han ratty played hilariously by Tom Hanks. That is when the film really starts into a cat and mouse chase between the two leads. As well as being very dramatic and intense we also explore the emotional turmoil from frank's Jr sheltered life as on the way through all his scamming he really has no one around to love. This is what I admire in Spielberg's directing. He knows how to get a cracking performance out of somebody but he also has a lot of characterization which I think is rare in some of his films but you also see it in Schindler's List and ET but you see it more here.

One of Spielberg's best.