A review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Directed by Steven Spielberg; written by Jeff Nathanson, based on the book by Frank W. Abagnale Jr. and Stan Redding; director of photography, Janusz Kaminski; edited by Michael Kahn; music by John Williams; production designer, Jeannine Oppewall; produced by Mr. Spielberg and Walter F. Parkes; released by DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 140 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.
STARRING: Leonardo DiCaprio (Frank Abagnale Jr.), Tom Hanks (Carl Hanratty), Christopher Walken (Frank Abagnale Sr.), Martin Sheen (Roger Strong), Nathalie Baye (Paula Abagnale), Amy Adams (Brenda Strong) and James Brolin (Jack Barnes).
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You’ve done it. So have I. At some point we’ve chosen to believe we can get away with something, and later we have paid for it. Whether we’ve been caught or not, we suffer guilt, regret, and the consequences of denial. We can all relate to Frank Abagnale, Jr.
Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can is a whimsical adaptation of the autobiography of Frank Abagnale, Jr., who, for a time, was the United States’ most notorious con-artist.
At the same time, the movie is – intentionally or otherwise – a remarkable parable about denying reality until reality catches up to you.
From a light-footed screenplay by Jeff Nathanson, Spielberg has crafted what would seem his most fun and frivolous film. It represents an interesting step for him as a storyteller. This time, impulsive, spontaneous, self-centered behavior is not the stuff of heroes but of cowards. Take that, Indiana Jones.
Nathanson’s script, based on the book by Frank M. Abagnale with Stan Redding, jumps all over the chronological map of Abagnale’s life, from his childhood in the 60′s to his incarceration in the late 70s. Abagnale had the F.B.I. on his tail for a long chase through several countries as he used his own homemade bogus checks. He earned a fortune posing as a variety of professionals – a high school substitute teacher, an airline pilot, a pediatrician, and a lawyer, all in his late teens.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Abagnale with wit, charm, a flashy smile, a dash of James Dean and more than a hint of Robert Redford. It’s the best work he’s done as a leading man yet.
His parents are played by Christopher Walken and Nathalie Baye, and wonderful characters they develop here. What a joy it is to see a family in which the parents and child are complex and interesting, with convincingly complex relationships. We can understand why young Frank admires his parents; they’re beautiful, classy, and there the sparks of passion have not died out in their exchanges. I can’t remember the last time a movie offered a teenage hero who looks up to his parents like this, or movie-parents who earned such admiration.
Thus, when the split happens, we feel Frank Jr.’s pain and sympathize with his desire to patch things up. Mom wants the American dream no matter what, and if she can’t get it with her husband, she’ll look elsewhere. She’ll change the rules. She’ll run. She’ll make up a new life, pretending she can get away with it. Franks Sr. and Jr. are abandoned, and Frank is awakened to the fact that paradise has been a sham.
The divorce, however, is just the beginning of Frank Sr.’s troubles. Bankruptcy looms, a consequence of his own denial of reality and his evasions of tax laws. His own manufactured reality crumbles and the hard reality of life’s difficult challenges become clear. Frank Jr. is terrified as his ideal world crumbles and he sees the lies that destroyed it. So he runs.
When I heard that Spielberg had turned this high-speed chase into a movie about a broken family, I was worried. It has been a long time since America’s favorite director has successfully crafted an action movie or a drama without finishing it off with an orgy of sentimentalism, sloganeering, emotional breakdowns, and subversive tearjerking. After we wept at the end of E.T., Spielberg lost his restraint. He has seemed determined to give us an emotional knockout every time since then, and it has drawn his attention away from his characters and craft. Movies make their biggest impact on us when we’re thinking and feeling at the same time. Spielberg’s films have become so much about feeling that he’s become predictable. Worse, he’s directed several films that have been marvelous entertainments up until the last minute when they’ve been swamped by unnecessary emotionalism. Schindler’s List was powerful enough; did he really need to beat the tears out of us by making his hero break down and sob for several minutes? Minority Report was brilliant sci-fi, but it would have succeeded far better without all those lapses of Tom Cruise weeping and mourning his lost happiness.
Here, thank goodness, our director never loses his grip. Emotion never dominates the plot. When the story draws us in, we are busy thinking and guessing and puzzling. We come to care for these characters deeply because of the little details. Thus, we have a more genuine emotional response to the film, without having to be told how to feel.
But the family drama is only part of the story. Frank’s flight from his fears only worsens his predicament. Soon, it’s not just poverty and hard realities that are pursuing him – the law comes after him too.
Playing Wile E. Coyote to Dicaprio’s Road Runner, Tom Hanks gets his first chance at big screen fun in quite a few years. He’s been put through the wringer ever since he decided to become a Serious Actor. He’s died of AIDS, crawled through D-Day, been stranded on an island until he half-starved, and watched his family destroyed by gangsters. Here, he’s handed the role of a frustrated stone-faced F.B.I. check-fraud expert named Carl Hanratty – and he fills in the gaps with something other than Oscar-eager Acting. Instead, he reaches back for the remains of his career as a comedian and finds inspiration, making Hanratty a delightfully odd mix of detective and Keystone Cop. It’s like he fused his own Pep Streebek character from Dragnet with Dan Akroyd’s Joe Friday. The costume, like the character, toes the line of caricature. But Hanks never tips over into Coen Brothers exaggeration. He stays just human enough to make the film’s more touching moments play with convincing weight and emotion.
As Abagnale escapes him one time after another, Hanratty begins to understand his target. His own loneliness and brokenness have driven him to obsess about his job, and he can sympathize with a boy running from the pain of a broken home. Thus, his interest becomes fatherly, a fact emphasized by Hanratty’s own divorce.
In spite of Hanks’ heartfelt work, it’s Frank’s real father who steals the show. Christopher Walken’s never had a role that has allowed him so much range. He’s funny, intense, broken, emotional, and… yes… he gets to dance a little. He’s a joy to watch. The Best Supporting Actor Oscar will probably come down to a race between Walken and Chris Cooper (Adaptation). Walken’s is the more complicated part; I’d choose him.
Walken makes Frank Sr. a man tired of running, reluctantly giving in to the demands of honest business. But he is not going to demand his son grow up at the same time. Frank Sr. watches his son’s antics with familiar amusement and a growing sadness. He knows the joy of “getting away with it,” but he also knows the bill will come due.
For the most part, Frank’s charades are played for maximum monetary gain. He wants to buy back the opulent life they once had, in hopes of drawing his mother back home. In other words, he thinks he can fix what is hopelessly broken, and he thinks money can do it.
Occasionally, though, he exercises his talents for the love of the game, as is the case in his dalliance with a high-priced call girl (Alias’s Jennifer Garner, whose presence here is an excellent joke. After all, she’s the professional pretender on television.) Frank’s brilliant manipulation of this prostitute’s money-grubbing is the film’s most clever twist. It may be amoral, but it increases our understanding that he is his father’s son. After all, his parents’ marriage began on just such weak footing. It’s glamorous, but the movie makes it very clear that such behavior carries a high price, even if he doesn’t pay a monetary penny.
Spielberg treats all of this with such a delicate touch that we are able to both admire the character and chuckle over the folly of his choices. It’s the sort of perspective I imagine God has on his children much of the time, enjoying the finer points of his creation but shaking his head as we try to get away with behavior that is not what he designed us for. It’s a tone of affection. Frank, and all of the film’s fools, get a taste of judgment, but they are also supplied with generous grace.
For the most part, Frank’s heart is bigger than his baser appetites. His sensitivity and opportunism intermingle when he charms a mousy nurse named Brenda (Amy Adams) who is suffering at a thankless desk job. He convinces Brenda that her braces make her beautiful, and then he takes to joke to impossible lengths. He returns her to her parents, who have condemned her for an abortion. By pretending to love her and believe in her, he makes her parents see her in a new light. He even befriends her Lutheran father (played in an over-the-top turn by Martin Sheen.) All of this makes Brenda fall for him harder and harder every minute.
Adams gives Brenda amusing gullibility; she makes us care for the girl, and that’s when we have to face the fact that Frank is going much too far. An inevitable heartbreak looms. Frank is becoming his father; all of his prizes have been bought with lies, as he makes himself out to be what he is not. All the time we’re horrified at the inevitable heartbreak he will eventually cause, but Frank moves with such spontaneity and willful denial of reality that we can’t help but be grateful for the good that comes out of so much recklessness.
The problem with Spielberg’s heroes is that they are often both childlike (faith, courage, impulsive) and childish (irresponsible, promiscuous, self-centered.) They fight in the name of honor, but they’re happy to employ almost any means to get their honorable ends. Catch Me If You Can is the exhausted cry of a hero who has broken the rules for too long. Some have said the film has a “Crime does pay” conclusion, but that’s only true if you think money buys peace of mind. Frank’s been running as a desperate attempt to repair what he did not break. But it’s out of his hands. And the more he runs, the more broken things become. When he comes to realize this, he sees that his methods mirror the very weaknesses that broke his family in the first place
Spielberg’s film resolves with an inspiring act of grace. I don’t want to spoil any details, so I’ll be deliberately vague here. But I found it interesting that grace begins at Christmas, and it comes to fruition under a baggage claim sign, where the prodigal finally comes to terms with his baggage. In the end, it’s the story of the prodigal son who finally comes home to a father-figure who has stopped pursuing him and is merely waiting to welcome him and help him.
Graceful flourishes like this short-circuit the usual Spielberg sentimentalism and give us a glimpse of what Spielberg could become. Imagine if his imagination came armed with poetry. As playful as Catch Me is at heart, it also suggests that Spielberg may have his best work yet in him. If so, Peter Jackson may not be the last hope for meaningful big screen escapism after all.