Based on the true story of Frank Abagnale Jr., Catch Me If You Can is a light, frothy but highly entertaining caper flick, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio's finest performance in years. DiCaprio plays Abagnale Jr., the son of Frank Sr. (an excellent Walken) and his wife, Paula (Baye). Primarily due to tax problems and mounting bills, Frank's parents separate and rather than living with either one of them, he runs away, intent on retrieving his father's fortune so they can 'be a family again'.
His means of achieving this are not quite as honourable, and his pursuit of his dream leads to him impersonating an aeroplane pilot, a doctor and a lawyer over the following couple of years, while ringing up a small fortune in forged checks. The youngest person ever on the FBI's ten most wanted list, Abagnale Jr played a long-running game of cat and mouse with his law enforcement pursuers, spearheaded by the dogged Carl Hanratty (a typically assured Hanks). Make no mistake about it; Catch Me If You Can is a light-hearted picture, and one which is played mostly for laughs by the director and his cast, who apparently have suspended all moral judgement when it comes to the antics of the teenager fraudster. Catch Me suffers a little with pacing as it moves into its second hour, and Spielberg overplays the paternal relationships in the film (an annoying career theme of the director) but ultimately this is a pleasing, slickly executed romp that shouldn't fail to entertain.
