ll I asked for was a chase film. Not a gun-fight, car-chase action flick, but a classy movie about a con man who smooth-talks the ladies and steals cash without getting his hands dirty – all while outwitting the earnest men of the law. I didn’t want the sinister triple-crosses of a David Mamet puzzle film, but a care-free flim-flam man in a story with close scrapes, nice suits, and catchy banter.


Catch Me If You Can delivers that – but barely. Catch Me If You Can is an easy-going holiday flick, but sorely uninspired. It’s weighed down by everything from its bloated two-and-a-half hour length, to a storyline that’s so unsuspenseful that the first scenes show us the end of the chase, after our hero’s been caught and thrown in jail. Loosely based on the life story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., Catch Me If You Can starts with Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) as an ordinary teenager. His father (Christopher Walken) is a small business owner whose charm and smooth talk can’t save him from debt and taxes; and when the family loses their house, Abagnale’s mother files for divorce. His parents’ break-up makes Abagnale run away, and as he scrapes out a life in New York City, he develops his talent for cons. He starts by trying to cash bad checks through innocent bank tellers, and then graduates to full-on imposture: he dresses up as a Pan Am airline pilot, forges payroll checks and flies around the country for free, charming and swindling everyone in his path. But eventually his check kiting draws the attention of the FBI - including the bookish, pasty Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), a bank fraud expert with no field experience who leads the chase to catch Abagnale.


Taking place in the 60s, Catch Me If You Can has some period charm, but doesn’t play it up as much as you’d expect. There are a few scenes that run as smooth and light as bath oil on a debutante – like a fantastic setpiece at Miami International Airport that includes a gaggle of pastel-clad stewardesses floating by to the music of Frank Sinatra. Yet most of the film feels, not so much retro, as old: sunlight pours lazily through windows like a slow afternoon at grandma’s place, and the colors look outright drab next to, say, Todd Haynes’ Technicolor homage Far From Heaven. Spielberg underplays his visual ideas – say, the contrast between Abagnale’s snazzy pilot uniform and the plain suits of his pursuers – though he often stoops to Forrest Gump-isms, like Walken’s “[life is like] two mice in a barrel” story, or a dollar bill that magically floats by Hanks’ face. Spielberg doesn’t aim for high concepts, but he also skips some obvious conventions that would have given the film zip. There’s no “Girl” in the story, just a series of roughly sketched women who are either ditzy or treacherous; and what could’ve been one nifty ending gets stretched across several scenes, dragging us along after we already know how it’ll end.


Physically, Leonardo DiCaprio fits the part: you can believe he’s a teenager who gets mistaken for an adult. But there’s something claylike about his delivery, lacking the full-on mischief of a teen prankster, or the pathos of a kid whose parents are splitting up. Also, to make sure he’s loveable, Spielberg makes him flawless - you’d think a kid this sharp and this amoral might be, say, a bit of a smart-ass.


Tom Hanks is more interesting as Hanratty, a detective who starts off inept but gradually rises to the challenge of capturing a master criminal. The stand-out performer, however, is Christopher Walken as Abagnale’s father. Walken is the only truly understated character in the film. There's a heartbreaking denial in his face as he promises that his life is about to get better; and with the subtlest expressions he shows how much he wants his son to get away with it, against all adult judgment.


The father and son relationship is the backbone of the story, which is less about crime than about maturity. Abagnale Jr.’s fantasy life and final crash to reality reads like an allegory for growing up and accepting responsibility, without any parents to guide him; but c’mon, hasn’t Spielberg made that flick about eighty times? And anyway, he’s doing nothing new: every great movie criminal has a depressing past or disturbing motive lurking behind the glamour. What Spielberg forgets is that the sadness is more poignant the less we hear about it, and the more we’re dazzled by the facade that hides it.