Should have caught him sooner.

Rating: Null/10 (15 December 2003)

These sorts of psychopaths are always interesting figures, one of the reasons stories and films about them keep appearing on a regular basis. (Tony Curtis did a nice number in "The Imposter".) The guys can charm the pants off you. They tend to be bright and handsome, or at least well groomed. And they run into situations that are bound to be comic. All the ingredients are there for an engaging flick.
Maybe one of the reasons we are fascinated by them is that we envy them. Here are people who are reasonably smart, who keep themselves clean, have decent manners, and in many ways resemble the rest of us except for one thing -- they lack anxiety. Well, anxiety of a particular sort, the kind that is sometimes called "responsibility," "conscience" or, if you want to stretch it, "superego." Any of us could learn how to pass for a lawyer by watching Perry Mason reruns for a couple of weeks. We could perhaps even pass the bar exam with a few weeks of dedicated study. We could all be doctors too, if being a doctor meant nothing more than strolling around in a lab coat with a stethoscope hanging around our necks and never having to perform a laparotomy. But we can't do it because we've been conditioned in such a way that we would be betrayed by our own anxiety.
DeCaprio is able to do it here, in this nicely directed Spielberg movie, with the help of his victims. The help comes in the form that sociologists call "normalization." We live our lives according to generally recognized scripts. If we do something it calls for a certain kind of response from the people around us. (Eg., what does the script call for next when we say to someone, "How are you"?) The mistakes we inevitably make are reinterpreted by others so that they seem to follow the script. DeCaprio as a doctor is called in unexpectedly to treat a patient in the ER. "Bicycle accident," says one of the other physicians. "Do you concur?" he asks the others one by one. They concur. "Carry on then," he tells them and leaves and they make up a good reason for his behavior.
Most of the movie is played for laughs, as Williams' light-hearted semi-fantasy theme tells us. And it has its amusing moments. DeCaprio has seduced a girl and is on the brink of marrying her when he blurts out the truth -- "I'm not a doctor, I'm not a Lutheran, I never went to Harvard, and I'm not a lawyer." Her jaw drops and she says, "You're not a LUTHERAN?" A scam in which DeCaprio chooses eight pretty young girls to play stewardesses and distract attention from him is staged like a Miss America contest. There are some dramatic moments too in which the film and the score, as manipulative as the DeCaprio character, practically begs you to feel sympathy for the guy. It stops just short of ripping open your thorax, reaching inside, and playing "Hearts and Flowers" on your heartstrings.
But it all leaves a kind of sour aftertaste if you give it any thought at all. Here is DeCaprio. Strutting around in his faux Pan Am pilot's uniform, or his doctor's clothes, a multimillionaire after hanging all this bad paper, all the women adoring him for being something he isn't, sprung from jail after a few years for a cushy job with the FBI, writing a book about his crimes, selling the rights to Hollywood. Fine for him, but he has cost the rest of us a good deal. These financial shenanigans alone must have boosted the banks' insurance rates, which means their operating expenses went up, which means the rates they charge us for their services went up, which means we all contributed our little bit to the 4.1 million dollar pot that DeCaprio's character has accumulated. And that's not counting the heartbreak he leaves behind. (Eg., once he dumps his girlfriend she disappears from the movie. She's portrayed as stupid, homely, and shallow. But she's as human as DeCaprio. How, exactly, did she feel about the whole affair?)
It seems unfair somehow that people like this should be celebrated at our expense, just because we have consciences and they don't. When a guy cuts in front of you in line it's a selfish act, and it doesn't matter whether he's charming or not. He's putting everybody else one place back and hasn't earned his position. It's sorry enough in real life. That the movie should celebrate the facts of DeCaprio's contempt and our own foolishness is really inexcusable.