Catch Me If You Can 2002
This was a very enjoyable movie. I was afraid that it would be just the story of a con artist. But he isn’t just any con artist. This guy starts off as just kind of inept and desperate but eventually becomes so smooth that he can walk through an airport where hundreds of federal agents are looking for him and go completely unnoticed even though they know exactly what he is going to do.
Leonardo DeCaprio is very good as the young self-made con artist who passes as a pilot when he isn’t even 20 years old yet. Usually a pretty boy, Leonardo uses all of his negatives to his advantage here to charm both men and women and shows that he who dares wins. Tom Hanks (whose Boston accent is deplorable) plays a gumshoe from a lower-tier federal enforcement agency (he investigates check forgeries in an age before safety paper). It reminds me of his role in A League of Our Own and it’s a stretch for him but he pulls it off. While any crook can get away with something once, every time he repeats it the odds build up against him. While Leonardo presses his luck, Hanks works diligently knowing eventually the law will win. It’s a great cat and mouse. And it takes it further by tacking on a suspiciously happy ending long after the chase is over.
This is great story-telling, well executed by everyone. Though I’m sure great liberties were taken with the truth (hard to take a story at face value that was written by a con artist) it is still a lot of fun to watch.
I’ll give it an A-, subtracting only for Hanks’ terrible accent and the way they take great liberties with what is believable.
Owned on: DVD