Catch Me If You Can (2002)

As soon as the credits started rolling I knew I was in for a treat. Music by John Williams... Christopher Walken... (Why wasn't I told about this before?)  The stylish credits wonderfully evoke the mid '60s, and after they are done Abagnale is introduced as a contestant on TV's "To Tell the Truth," where we're told that before he was 21, he cashed $4 million in bogus checks and successfully passed himself off as an airplane pilot, a doctor and an assistant district attorney.

Frank's intention was to cash a few fake Pan Am Airlines checks to support himself after (literally) running away from his broken home in New Rochelle at 16. Spielberg enjoys showing the mechanical details of Frank's scams in great detail, and how Frank graduates into bigger and better swindles while remaining a desperately lonely boy. At 140 minutes the film is quite long, but it is so well hewn that you don't really notice.

Frank becomes so good at the con game that when FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Hanks, brilliant for a change, as a composite of several real-life characters) catches Frank red-handed in a Hollywood hotel, he even worms his way out by conning Hanratty into thinking he's a Secret Service agent.

An embarrassed Hanratty, who is as lonely as Frank, vows to stop at nothing to capture the fraudster, even as he comes to admire the young man's prodigious skill at his chosen profession. Frank goes on to become a doctor and then a lawyer gleaning his professional training by watching episodes of "Dr. Kildare" and "Perry Mason!" Hanratty, in one of Hanks' broadest and most likable peformances to date, is always a half step behind... They face off again in a cool sequence in which the increasingly ingenious Frank, seemingly cornered by the geeky Hanratty, hastily recruits a gaggle of "junior stewardesses" to help him flee the coop.

You'll be hard pressed to find a movie that's more fun, and packed with nostalgia as this one. The layout of the airports, offices, the furniture and even the clothes, cars and hair styles all shout '60's, and there is no need for an 'in your face' sound track of lame old songs to help set the period!

There are a few scenes that might have been cut to save on time. I thought the one with the hooker might have been one of them, but I'm glad they all got through. The con mans (boys?) intermittent encounters with his father were brilliant, and Walken shows his class with a thoroughly riveting performance as a good natured rogue who's life, wife and business are slowly torn away from him.

"Catch Me If You Can" would have been faster paced without all this extra drama, but I for one was glad that it stayed in. If you want a good old fashioned yarn set in a good old fashioned era then you can't go wrong with this movie. Maybe that girl isn't so bad after all, eh? Great movie.

About me... Hi, I'm Clint, and I have been asked to do a movie review column for AsiantTS.com, or more specifically the magazine that accompanies it: The Clubhouse. I am a writer based in Asia and Europe, and I have been widely published worldwide. I enjoy watching movies, and have written at length on this genre for many years.