Crime does pay, after all

We have one day a week when the babysitter stays late; I have dubbed this “Movie Day.” So far we’ve seen two movies this way.

Being a parent: excitement is “Movie Day.”

Yesterday’s movie choice was between Catch Me If You Can and Chicago, and we chose the former. There were several reasons why, although paramount among them (for me) is that Catch Me If You Can was showing in the snappy new Galleria, whereas Chicago is at the run-down and kind of icky AMC theaters near us. Given how disappointed I’ve been in the majority of movies I’ve seen recently, I’d at least like the comfort.

Lucky moi: a comfortable theater and a good movie.

Catch Me If You Can is the story of Frank W. Abagnale, Jr., who became a world-class con man at the tender age of 16 or 17 or something. He impersonated a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer; he forged and cashed millions of dollars worth of checks; and he managed to elude law enforcement for years. These days he’d end up in solitary for the rest of his life as part of the War on Terrorism, but thirty years ago he got let out early to help the Feds and appear on “To Tell The Truth” trying to fool Kitty Carlisle.

Frank is played by Leonardo Di Caprio, the only A-list star who can pass for being somewhere close to 17 (and probably will until shortly before his 45th birthday). Di Caprio is really good; I had no trouble believing he could charm a young lady out of her knowledge of the federal banking system and leave her feeling that he’d done her a favor by it.

The movie tells us that Frank entered the world of crime in reaction to the downhill slide of his family’s finances and subsequent breakup of his parents’ marriage. Christopher Walken does a great job as the sad sack Frank Sr., proving once again he can actually act and not just talk strangely. Frank Jr.’s desperate need to make everything the way it had been drives him to bigger and bolder scams, and it’s all for nought: his mother has left and isn’t coming back, his father won’t take anything from him, and he can’t be honest with the one woman he truly loves.

Frank is pursued by FBI agent Carl Hanratty, played by Tom Hanks. Hanks mostly acts like a stereotype of an FBI agent: humorless, dedicated, and single-minded about his quarry. Their cat-and-mouse game takes them all over the country and all over the world.

Catch Me If You Can is a romp: entertaining, silly, and with no deeper message than “Crime doesn’t pay, unless you’re exceedingly talented and clever, in which case it pays exceptionally well.” The performances are great, and the production design is wonderful: you can tell how time is passing by the shape of Tom Hanks’s glasses.

The most wonderful thing about the movie is that you can’t tell Steven Spielberg directed it. None of the usual cloying sentimentalism, no Spielberg shots, no I-am-an-important-director-and-one-day-I’ll-get-mine stuff. If I hadn’t known it, I’m not sure I would have guessed it was Spielberg—just an exceedingly confident and skilled director.

Darin and I have been exceptionally disappointed in most of the movies we’ve seen over the past two to three years. (In the middle of Amélie he leaned over and said, “Do you think we’re just out of the habit of seeing movies?” which pretty much summed up my own feelings at that exact moment.) But Catch Me If You Can was a great way to spend two hours: fun, energetic, and moving.