Polished, highly entertaining - and cleverer than it seems

Rating: 8/10 (30 January 2003)

Which of us hasn't dreamed of succeeding in lots of fabulously high-profile careers? Doctor? Lawyer? Airline Pilot? For the past generation, the role model of escapist high achievement was given full power in the shape of James Bond, an ordinary looking upper class Englishman that achieved the impossible through fantastic gadgets and penetrating responses to life-threatening situations. But in the present day, the believability of a Bond-like secret agent is wearing thin. Similarly, the vicarious glamour of Hollywood stars is no longer a panacea to the wish-fulfilment dreams of working class drudgery. Enter stage left, appealing to everyone's slightly less than moral urges, Mr Frank Abagnale Jnr. And just to reinforce how it was possible to fake being a pilot, doctor and public prosecutor, we are reliably informed that it is all based on a true story.
(Minor plot spoilers): A sudden victim of a broken home, the adolescent Frank Abagnale Jnr (Leonardo DiCaprio) hightails to New York, blagging a pilot's uniform to get a bit of respect, and brilliantly forging increasingly large cheques. He also fools the airlines. Tiring of parading and cocking his pilot hat to the infuriated airlines, he poses as a doctor, learning the lingo from the TV show Dr Kildare, before moving on to become an assistant public prosecutor. To evade escape, he recruits a bevy of eye-candy airline stewardesses', and leaves the country under the noses of dozens of FBI agents. Capture and prison sentences follow, but he gets off lightly and becomes a respected, megabucks-earning hero at the same time.
Leonardo DiCaprio has tackled this real-life spoof with a professionalism that helps to make the film one that will possibly spawn look-alikes. His attention to detail included face to face research with the real life Abagnale and, even if the part does not demand the range of acting talent that instantly cries `Oscar', the skill with which he has executed his role marks him out as a very polished actor. Likewise Christopher Walken (as Abagnale Snr) turns in a first class performance and brings a range of emotion to his part (the beleaguered father) that is rare in Walken characters. Tom Hanks' performance, as the befuddled FBI agent trying to chase low-life Abagnale Jnr (who is patently of much higher intelligence than his pursuer), has restored my confidence in him as a Grade A actor  especially after his rather wooden `Road to Perdition'. In the Director's chair, Spielberg has tackled something outside his usual stomping ground: Catch Me If You Can is a light-hearted romp at heart, but delivered with such panache that it wins as an action thriller and psychological drama at the same time.
For all its apparently lightweight pretensions, Catch Me If You Can is a fine achievement in popular filmmaking.