Frank Abagnale was a bad boy, but he had an awful lot of charm.
Dropping out of high school at age 16, he became the absolute master of fraud. During his five-year crime spree he passed $2.5 million in bad checks and hopped around the world in the guise of a Pan-Am pilot, a lawyer, a doctor and a professor. He was known as “The Skywayman” to police of 26 different countries.
When he was finally caught at age 21, he served only a paltry jail sentence before the F.B.I. arranged his release and set him to work on anti-fraud measures, preventing people like us from following in his footsteps.
But we can vicariously enjoy his exploits in his memoir, “Catch Me If You Can,” which has also been floating around Hollywood for several years, practically begging for a movie to be made. And we can enjoy them even more with Steven Spielberg’s excellent film adaptation of the book, which came out Christmas Day.
Abagnale’s memoir is a fun and entertaining read, and Spielberg breathes the same light-hearted air into “Catch Me If You Can.” Emphasizing a sense of place somewhat missing from the book, the sexy swagger of the ’60s is brought vividly to life — the new and sparkling allure of airlines complete with blushing, buxom girls as flight attendants.
And into the trusting smiles of the Jet Age is loosed 16-year-old Frank Abagnale Jr., a wonderfully cast Leonardo DiCaprio. Summoning up all of his charm, DiCaprio infuses Abagnale with a magnetic personality and confidence that wins over the audience just as easily as it wins over the bank tellers who cash his bad checks. He smiles, girls swoon, forgery ensues.
Abagnale’s book begins and ends with his crime spree, but the movie gives us some before-and-after that makes for a more complete story. In the movie, Abagnale’s father’s influence is increased significantly, played excellently by Christopher Walken. Frank Sr. is a minor con-man himself (an embellishment from the book), and when his family is on the brink of splitting, the younger Abagnale hits the road.
Remembering his father’s lesson — that you are what people think you are — Abagnale quickly learns that an appropriate uniform, a quick smile and few nicely placed words can get him quite far. Acquiring a Pan-Am uniform, Abagnale wanders around with a newfound authority and respect and finds that with ease he can cash bad checks from his bogus checking accounts.
Eventually, he starts forging Pan-Am payroll checks to cash as well and learns of a little secret of the trade: jump seats. Pilots needing to get from one place to another can “dead-head” — that is, ride in the cockpit with the other pilots in a fold-out seat. It isn’t long before Abagnale is hopping around the United States, forging checks as he goes.
It also isn’t long before the F.B.I. is hot on his trail, led by Carl Hanratty, an excellent and entertaining Tom Hanks. This quickly leads to one of the best scenes in the movie, a confrontation between Abagnale and Hanratty in a hotel room.
From there, Abagnale’s exploits become decidedly more daredevil, as he uses his charm and confidence to weasel his way in and out of a variety of interesting situations, including posing as a lawyer and working as a doctor. But he never loses sight of his primary occupations: girls and money.
This movie is a riot — just a pleasure to watch. The book is also very good. Both are pure escapism and have merits independent of each other. Perhaps the best thing about the book is the detail with which Abagnale discusses his various scams, as well as some great episodes that were not incorporated into the movie.
The best aspects of the film are the humor, the seductive sense of place, the magnetic charm of DiCaprio as Abagnale and Spielberg’s predictably excellent direction. Most impressively, Spielberg curbs the sentimentality that harmed his last two projects, “A.I.” and “Minority Report.”
When he investigates the father-son relationship, emotions are not forced and the subtlety is appreciated. In turn, the relationships seem genuine, and the projection of fatherhood that Abagnale places on Hanratty, seen through regular Christmas Eve phone calls, is a nice touch.
I would recommend both the book and the movie, but if you only have two hours to spare, definitely go see the movie. “Catch Me If You Can” is a nod to the sexy retro-ness of the Jet Age, and with lots of laughs and winks it is one of the best movies of the year.
Grade: A