Review of Catch Me If You Can (2002) by Filmclub — 27 Mar 2016

The larky "Catch Me if You Can" is like a trot around the track for the thoroughbreds involved, and one of the results is that it takes them far too long to get to the finish line. A good 40 minutes too long, this amiable account of the true story of teenage con man Frank Abagnale Jr. is a case in which the talented players could have won big had they cashed out much earlier; you can literally feel the returns diminishing the longer the game is extended.

Abagnale’s autobiographical book recounts a youth so fantastic that it’s amazing it took Hollywood 20 years to get around to putting it on the screen. Reeling from his beloved parents’ divorce, the 16-year-old left home and discovered talents for survival that he readily turned into a genius for scamming. Playing out a string for an amazing five years, Abagnale successfully passed himself off as a Pan Am co-pilot, surgeon and lawyer while becoming a true master in one field in particular — that of writing bad checks.

Although the film reps a lightweight breather between the darker and more grandiose projects Spielberg is taking on these days, there may also lurk a personal connection for the director with the subject of the film. After all, at the very same time Abagnale was pulling his stunts, the teenage Spielberg was dressing in coat and tie and trying to palm himself off as an executive on the Universal lot, a ploy that paid off when he got a TV directing gig by age 21.

Setting a fizzy mood via some very mid-’60s animated opening credits and a jazzy John Williams theme that harks back to his “Johnny” Williams days as pianist for Henry Mancini’s orchestra, pic gets off to a jaunty start as DiCaprio’s Abagnale is introduced as one of three contestants on the venerable gameshow “To Tell the Truth.” Unfortunately, neither is the mood consistently maintained nor is the climax of the TV show ever shown.

After beginning with a framing scene of FBI Special Agent Carl Hanratty (Hanks) coming to return Abagnale from his Marseilles prison cell to the U.S. in 1969, action flips back six years to New Rochelle, N.Y. Local businessman Frank Sr. (Christopher Walken) is a romantic, better at dreaming and scheming than at supporting his family. His proudest achievement is having brought back a French girl (Nathalie Baye) as his bride after WWII, so both he and his son are brought low when her infidelity triggers divorce, a matter exacerbated by dad’s troubles with the IRS.

The FBI is on to Abagnale before long, but he proves remarkably elusive. Even when Hanratty corners the “Skyway Man,” gun drawn, in a Hollywood hotel room, Abagnale is able to turn the tables on his pursuer and slip away to continue his spree, this time in Atlanta.

Spielberg and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson (the “Rush Hour” pics) might have taken this as a cue to begin wrapping things up themselves, but instead elaborate a great deal of follow-up material to more-is-less effect.

Info about how Abagnale, under Hanratty’s tutelage, came to become a check fraud expert for the FBI after serving but part of his prison sentence is interesting and satisfyingly ironic, but could have been dispensed in a fraction of the time. Ultimately, the film pays for the excess baggage it takes on, suggesting this would have been a very good occasion for Spielberg to make his first under-two-hour film since “E.T.”.

Lively and appealingly retro as the picture may be, it has other problems as well. Attempt to give the story more dimensions than provided by the outlandish narrative result in a wobbly tone. While Abagnale’s love for his father and evident desire to succeed where the older man has failed provides plausible psychological motivation for the son’s exploits, the darkening of their relationship as the story progresses adds little and sidelines the narrative at times.

More vexing still are the film’s visuals. Due to the cues received from the opening credits, the era involved and the serio-comic approach, the viewer could reasonably expect a high-gloss studio look in the manner of a Blake Edwards picture of the period; a bright, artificially polished style would have just added to the fun.

Instead, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski eschews old-school elegance for gobs of blown backlight cascading through windows and other sources, even to the point of obscuring faces in the foregrounds. No one in Hollywood shot movies in this fashion until the ’70s, and the disjuncture here provides a big disappointment given the possibilities for period precision provided by the diverse locations, Jeannine Oppewall’s resourceful production design and Mary Zophres’ costumes.

Charming, clean-cut and blessing his con man with an optimism that assumes the best possible outcome no matter how dire the dilemma, DiCaprio betrays not a speck of the sullenness he exhibited in “Celebrity” and “The Beach,” nor the stoic toughness he used in “Gangs of New York.