Not Mr Spielberg's best by a long way

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2011)

Good films generally have good stories which have been rewritten as great screenplays. This film's screenplay fails to live up to the story it retells. Any film portraying the hero/villain (Frank Jnr) as a contestant in a game show as a first take has a lot of ground to make up before it ends.
There is a hollowness in this film which begins with the tale of the two mice who fell into a bucket full of cream, because I thought only one of the mice was honest and, by the end of the film, I knew I was right. There is a nastiness in this film which is apparent via the targeting of the female bank clerks and others for trickster game playing during the film. The scams actually do harm people along the way although we are not credited with enough intelligence by Mr Spielberg of what that harm may be.
We have an unlikeable character for the alternative hero/villain (Hanks's FBI investigator Hanratty) who is not allowed to show any redeeming quality at all, except for a crafty swipe at Frank Jnr whenever he can, and doesn't the lad deserve it? We even have characters playing 'suspicious minds' just in case we lose sympathy with Frank Jnr's game playing, but, unlike Hanratty, they are actually mostly clueless. And any who aren't clueless seemingly don't get a mention in case it spoils the plot. So what may have been a very believable book is not a believable screenplay.
The acting is patchy. I enjoyed Frank Jnr's parents doing their thing, and, mildly speaking, Amy Adams's Brenda, but that is about it. The rest were just not very convincing at all.
So definitely not Spielberg's best and if you'd like to see the man at consummate ease with his medium spend your money on a re-run of "Duel" which is still my favourite Spielberg film.
3/10 because it is overlong and I wasn't entertained.