Catch Me If You Can
July 2003 Reviewed by: Josh Barber Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Remember how all through school, whenever test time came around, teachers advised students to trust their instincts and not second-guess themselves into a wrong answer? Considering that, young Steven Spielberg must have gotten poor marks as a young lad; his films of late always start out as imaginative flights of fancy before limping to a clanking, sputtering halt under his desire to reunite all the characters into some happily idyllic nuclear family. See A.I. for the worst example of this approach. With Catch Me If You Can, Spielberg has finally managed to get all the way through a film without demanding that his audience ignore the beauty of his escapist work in favor of some poorly executed and pretentious "meaning."

Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a typical suburban boy in the early '60s -- complete with loving parents seeing him through a quiet life. When his father (Christopher Walken) gives Frank the news that he and his mother are getting divorced, Frank runs away from home. In need of money, he embarks on a multimillion-dollar adventure of check forgery, habitual lying, and identity theft, but with FBI fraud investigator Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) on his trail, how long and how far can Frank run?

Spielberg follows his two dark, futuristic chase movies, A.I. and Minority Report, with this bright and sunny look into the past. This golden setting allows the director to reflect on his own formative years. Since he obviously wasn't focusing on the story, there had to be more complex reasons for Frank's chronic deception than a need to make his father proud, just as there had to be more to check fraud (colloquially termed "paper hanging" by the Feds) than buying model airplanes.

The cast all does a superb job. Tom Hanks, acting around a coastal New England accent, finds himself in a role that calls for something besides the quiet determination of his latest roles. Leonardo DiCaprio actually gives us a glimmer of that promise of talent seen before he was caught up in his own titanic pre-teen hype machine, and Christopher Walken shows why he is one of our most interesting working actors.

All the beautiful lighting is preserved well on DreamWorks' 1.85:1 disc. Edges are soft, not because of poor encoding, but because that is the way the film was shot. The colors are warm and inviting, nearly a photo negative of the dark saturation of Spielberg's two previous efforts. The soundtrack is wonderfully active for such a dialogue-driven film, John Williams' understated score flows quietly, and even ambient noise is reproduced faithfully.

The disc's main menu, reflecting those tremendously long yet graphically precise opening credits, gives viewers three choices of menus: one based on pilots, one based on hospitals, and one based on the courtroom. It is a clever yet simple device, reflecting the mood of the film.

The special features on the second disc begin with the 17-minute "Behind the Camera." A good overview of the entire project, this "making of" avoids reiterating the plot in favor of informative interviews with DiCaprio, Spielberg, and other cast members to create a candid and friendly behind-the-scenes look at the film.

The eye-rollingly titled featurette, "Cast Me If You Can," covers, appropriately, the casting process. With stories on both the stars and their main supports, the insight offered as to the reasons these people are in the film today is very good -- for instance, Jennifer Garner received a small role because Spielberg is a big fan of TV's Alias.

"Frank Abagnale: Between Reality and Fiction" introduces the viewer to the man who inspired this story. Broken down into four sections -- a general look at Abagnale, his life as a pilot, his other careers, and his decision to go legit -- this feature points out the differences between Frank's real life and what we've seen on the screen. A choice to play all four would have been appreciated, however.

For an examination of the other side of Frank's life, we are given "The FBI Perspective." In interviews with the film's FBI technical advisor and other agents who were in the Bureau during that time period, we get the chance to learn more about bank security and the world in which Frank and Carl moved.

The disc is rounded off with a "Scoring" featurette that interviews John Williams; photo galleries; brief biographies and production notes; as well as "In Closing," a short goodbye from the cast and crew.

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