Run, Run as Fast as You Can

Rating: 8/10 (23 April 2010)

Frank Abignale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) is running from a crumbling family life. Frank sets out reconnect his mother (Nathalie Baye) and father (Christopher Walken). Frank Jr.'s mother leaves his father because of some financial difficulties. Quickly Frank finds out that the real world doesn't come cheap and pays for his new lifestyle with fraudulent checks. Only being 16, Frank finds out that all the money in the world cannot bring back the past. Pushed by his father, Frank desperately tries to buy his parents reunion. A great true story of Frank Abagnale Jr., Catch Me If You Can shows the lengths a young man will go to in order to get back what he holds dear.
Hot on Frank's heals is the smart, but often mistaken, FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks). While trying to reconnect his parent's lost marriage, Frank finds something he isn't looking for in Brenda Strong (Amy Adams). The two hit it off and quickly fall in love. A reoccurring color and lighting motif appears in the meeting of Frank and Brenda and suggests the possible downfall of Frank's new life. (It's always a girl.) Director Steven Spielberg manipulates lighting and color to show the glamorous lifestyle of a pilot, doctor, and lawyer, all careers Frank cons his way into. The contrast to the brightness of the glamorous appears in a drab, dark palette when young Frank's life isn't heading where he would like.
Like Max in Where the Wild Things Are, Frank creates a new world for himself in order to deal with what is taking place at home. DiCaprio does a phenomenal job of creating empathy from the audience for his character. Although Frank is breaking the law, it is hard not to root for him.
Frank manipulates people to get to his goal, an elaboration of something he learned early on from his father. Little did he know at the time, Frank's lifestyle gave him the education to now be the world's foremost leading authority on check fraud.
Frank sets out to re-establish his childhood, but ends up growing into a lifestyle all his own.