Catch Me If You Can
The evolution of Leonardo DiCaprio’s acting talent can be looked at in a upward curve starting with 1997’s megahit Titanic, a movie with terrible writing, terrible acting and a lead performance by DiCaprio that redefined the terms smug, smarmy, shallow and unlikable, but the movie just so happened to be redeemed by its amazing effects, technical design and a bombastic directing job by James Cameron that The Academy just had to honor. However, even as 51% of the population put DiCaprio on their ultimate heartthrob list, he was still a marked man in the eyes of the male moviegoing public that was ready, willing and able to trash him in any of his follow up projects. And they did, one movie after another and it wasn’t until he sought solace under the watchful eye of Martin Scorsese that his acting started getting better and better until he had reached legitimate Oscar quality, but besides Scorsese, there was also Steven Spielberg, who took the chance of casting DiCaprio in the lead role of one of his own prestige projects in 2002, albeit one that he was reluctant to direct as he was originally attached solely as a producer but finally relented when it seemed that no one else wanted the job while DiCaprio gave what amounts to the first fully sustained and quality performance of his career. The material itself seemed a bit sketchy, telling the story of Frank Abagnale Jr., widely acknowledged as the single most successful con man in American history, a kid from a poor upbringing with a genius IQ who ran away from home over the trauma of his parents divorcing and then cut a bold and brave trail taking on different personas and piling up money all before the tender age of 21. And in the part DiCaprio shines with his youthful looks helping him sell the character’s age (though he was 28 at the time of filming) and his slick, fast talking style (and gentle romantic style with the ladies) belies the fact that at a time before extensive background checks and verifying identities, people were really dumb enough to believe whatever you told them even if it was an obvious kid in front of them pretending to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a fully trained airline pilot as the film shows how Abagnale’s brilliant acumen allowed him to teach himself just enough tricks to always manage to fake his way through. His motivation? That would appear to be his father, Frank Sr. (Christopher Walken in a Supporting Actor Oscar Nominated Performance), a born loser who had met his mother while stationed in France and brought her home with him and then it was straight downhill for him all the rest of his life as he eventually got into serious trouble with The IRS over tax fraud and tax evasion, watching as the government slowly ate away at his life and financial well being until his wife (under no obligation to suffer through this kind of life if she stayed married to him) leaves him, but the curious thing about Walken is that he’s also a bit of an amateur huckster / scam artist himself, even getting his young son to go along with him on his lame little schemes all while he curses those people and corporations in the world who seem to have all of the money and yet absolutely no charity whatsoever for a little guy like him. That’s why whenever he has the chance to see his son, he is fully aware of what Frank Jr. is doing and yet remains steadfastly proud of him for taking back even just a little piece of what they took from him to begin with. While Walken does give a very good performance here playing an obviously broken man, it is marred a bit by the real life circumstances surrounding Frank Sr. who was not only said to be a good and decent man, but was also actually one of the first victims to be ripped off by his own son and he never really maintained any contact with him afterwards (as he does in the movie), which makes one wonder what real motives Frank Jr. had besides simply being malicious and having nothing but a pure contempt for most people’s trusting natures. Abagnale would become a master of knowing that taking on the right appearance and look meant everything in people’s eyes and he also developed a keen, uncanny eye towards the forgery of bank and company checks (his preferred mode of transactions) and this will soon put him onto the watchful radar of The FBI’s Carl Hanratty (a composite character) as played by Tom Hanks. The casting of Hanks in a secondary type role is a curious one given his level of stardom as he appears to have put on a good deal of weight and even adopted an annoying and untraceable accent to play his character as a geeky nerd who is snickered at by his FBI colleagues for being so passionate about the unexciting and unglamorous world of bank fraud, but the fact that Hanks has toned down his leading man persona so drastically allows him to remain just that of a supporting role and gives DiCaprio more of a chance to shine here despite the dumb (by even the real life Abagnale’s opinion) idea of having Abagnale (after a chance face to face run in with Hanks) carry on a kind of half serious, half mocking “relationship” with his pursuer, making it a tradition of sorts to call him on Christmas Eve at The FBI Headquarters (where a lonely Hanks sits there with nothing to do) and conduct some sort of a mindgame with him in order to keep the story fresh (which the real Abagnale countered by saying how that would be the absolute stupidest thing that he could have ever done). Even as Abagnale’s jetsetting ways are rather impressive, the problem here relies on the length of time which the movie comes in at (apparently Spielberg thought the story to be more epic than it actually was) which not only makes it a bit too long but also includes an excessive “James Bond Fantasy” scene that (despite making room for a cameo by a hot Jennifer Garner as a hooker) really had no place in the movie (and even still at that length the movie glosses over most of Abagnale’s international escapades). When the heat gets too close from him pretending to be an airline pilot, Abagnale relocates to Atlanta and bullshits his way into becoming the head doctor and late night shift supervisor at a local hospital. While there, he winds up romancing a pretty but awkward young nurse (Amy Adams) and then (with genuine feelings of commitment and wanting to settle down), he heads out to New Orleans to meet her family and ask her rich lawyer father (Martin Sheen) for his blessing to marry his daughter which leads to him switching gears and changing up his fake professional life to become a lawyer himself (somehow convincing Sheen that he is on the level) before miraculously passing the Louisiana bar exam based solely on his own heightened level of intelligence. When he starts working for Sheen as a prosecutor, Hanks picks up the scent with a vengeance, leading to Abagnale fleeing the country before a sordid showdown in France where the nerdy FBI guy finally gets his man. While it’s obvious that Abagnale was able to pull off his crimes because back in the 60’s most people had a more innocent (i.e. gullible) outlook on matters, one must still admire the nervy, ballsy, absolutely fearless approach that he took to these scams despite being pretty much just a kid and that is where DiCaprio does exceptionally well in bringing that anything goes, all or nothing attitude when it comes to either getting what he wants or telling people what he wants them to believe which is a fine contrast to Hanks and his saggy, more character actor type performance that we have on hand. Turns out that Abagnale really was smarter than everyone else in the room, finding a way to convince his FBI captors that his advanced, expert knowledge in forging checks and defrauding banks and companies out of millions would prove useful to them in helping to catch others who engage in that sort of activity, even going on to personally redesign checking methods everywhere and advancing their security measures all while making millions of dollars himself legitimately in doing so (basically the criminal making sure that nobody can emulate him). While this story may not be as suspenseful, thrilling or as epic as some of Spielberg’s other works, it certainly makes for an amusing, sly little comedy that while a bit overproduced at times (the lighting in many scenes is just insane in how it’s overdone), it nonetheless marked the turning of the corner for DiCaprio from being just another bland, colorless pretty boy to being one of the best actors of this or any other generation…
8/10