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CATCH
ME IF YOU CAN
4/10
USA
2002 : Steven Spielberg : 140mins
“Everybody
Runs” was the tagline of Minority
Report - Spielberg’s first chase epic of 2002, and it fits
the second just fine: Catch Me If You Can’s teenage-conman hero
Frank Abagnale Jr (Leonardo DiCaprio) barely pauses for breath as he skips
around the world cashing forged cheques, with the FBI’s Carl Hanratty
(Tom Hanks) in dogged pursuit.If anything, Abagnale’s exploits are marginally
less plausible than the frighteningly believable 2051 dystopia
envisaged in Minority Report:
But
apparently it’s all true – Jeff Nathanson’s script is based on Abagnale’s
own autobiography - proving that Abagnale’s dad Frank Sr (Christopher
Walken) was correct in informing his son that people are so dazzled by
uniforms and other badges of power and authority that they never think
to take a closer look. The metaphor he uses is the legendary kit of the
Yankees baseball team which so successfully intimidates all opposition:
“they can’t see past the pinstripes.” Then again, why should we believe
such a self-professed confidence trickster as Abagnale? Catch Me
was released shortly before Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, based
on Chuck Barris’s ‘unauthorised autobiography’in which the former game-show
magnate claimed to have been a hitman for the CIA. Charlie Kaufman’s script
plays with the ambiguities of Barris’s wild assertions – but here Nathanson
has no time or inclination for any kind of cleverness.
His
script is, instead, a rather messy construction featuring an awkward,
sub-Magnolia game-show
introduction (which is then promptly forgotten about), a ragged framing
story starting with Abagnale’s capture by Hanratty, and some confusing
multiple flashbacks that ensure we’re never quite sure where we are in
the story, or how old Abagnale is at any given time. We flit back and
forth between time-frames, apparently at random, preventing any real build-up
of interest, while the ‘action climax’ in which Abagnale makes an ingenious
escape from an aeroplane might have worked a lot better if it didn’t so
strongly recall 1981’s The Pursuit of D B Cooper from 1981, a low-budget
variant on similar themes with Treat Williams and Robert Duvall in the
roles corresponding to Abagnale and Hanratty. But there’s a lot more to
come – at least 20 minutes of cloying coda showing how Abagnale ended
up working for the FBI under the paternal guidance of Hanratty.
This
is all too reminiscent of Spielberg’s last two features, A
I and Minority Report, both of which ended up bloated beyond
their natural running-times with the addition of unneccesary and overly
sentimental extended epilogues. This is a director who hasn’t made a sub-two-hour
movie for over 20 years, and who long ago attained such an exalted level
of power that nobody near to him ever dare suggest that he’s perhaps going
a little too far. He should have paid closer attention to the opening
titles by Agnes Deygas – nimble, economic, simple and brilliantly effective,
telling the whole story in charmingly stylised sixties-style animation
in a matter of minutes. It says much about this film in particular and
Hollywood in general that the name of Ms Deygas, by far the most creative
person involved with this movie, is buried in small print, while those
of Spielberg, Hanks and DiCaprio are festooned on every bus and billboard
from Vilnius to Valparaiso.
The
opening titles also showcase John Williams at his snazzy best – elsewhere
Spielberg allows his regular collaborator far too much leeway, smothering
nearly every scene in distracting muzak to underline every point and nuance.
What should have been a zippy, smart, Out of Sight style flick
becomes a leaden, self-important exercise that falls awkwardly between
comedy and drama. Spielberg simply doesn’t seem temperamentally suited
to the material – he makes spectacularly ham-fisted use of ace cinematographer
Janusz Kaminski, for instance, allowing the veteran Polish DP to bathe
scene after scene in a gauzy glow that underlines the fundamentally sentimental,
achingly over-familiar basis of the story: this is yet another American
movie about sons searching for fathers and fathers searching for sons.
Spielberg
does little to give any new kind of twist to what has become desperately
tired material – his style doesn’t seem to have evolved one jot over the
years, and looks more dated than ever. It’s part of the joke that Abagnale
learns everything he knows from TV shows like Perry Mason and Dr
Kildare, but the joke is really on Spielberg – he learned everything
he knews from sixties TV, and it really isn’t good enough any more.
There’s one especially embarrassing scene at a poolside party which seems
to strain for a Paul Thomas Anderson effect (like that game-show opening)
but seems geriatric in comparison with what younger directors are able
to toss off seemingly without effort.
Spielberg’s
touch with actors seems to be a little off here as well – Walken and Hanks
can look after themselves, and both turn in performances which are, in
truth, rather better than the movie deserves. Hanks, in particular, has
a lot of fun with the klutzy-but-persistent Hanratty, although he does
get a little snarled up around the character’s Boston vowels on occasion.
DiCaprio isn’t quite so fortunate, however – he copes reasonably well
with what is a very suitable role, but hits major trouble in the big confrontation
scene where Hanratty tracks Abagnale down in a French printing-works:
the desperation we see is more DiCaprio’s than Abagnale’s, and Spielberg
doesn’t seem to be able to do anything to help.
Even
so, all of the male characters come off a lot better than the women –
Frank’s mother Paula (Nathalie Baye) gets especially short shrift, her
unsympathetic portrayal making a nonsense of her son’s supposed agonies
over which of his divorcing parents he wants to live with. Frank’s string
of conquests receive even shoddier treatment from Nathanson and Spielberg
– they are mostly hookers and/or airheads, while his fiancee Brenda (Amy
Adams) is left almost literally standing at the altar. Then in the smug
end titles we’re informed that Frank is currently enjoying his 26th
year of marriage – presumably not to the hapless Brenda.
Any
real damage Frank’s con-tricks may cause is glibly glossed over – when
posing as a paediatrician, he’s faced with a child whose leg has been
badly damaged in a car accident, but the whole incident is played for
(unconvincing) laughs. Spielberg is presumably hoping that we’re too dazzled
by the remarkable nature of Abagnale’s story, and the presence of such
big names in front of and behind the camera, to dwell on such deficiencies
– not to mention the numerous careless anachronisms and absurdities (keep
an eye out for the
tabletop
photo of Paula’s new husband) scattered among the supposed ‘period’ décor
details. For many, the Spielberg name denotes a hyper-professionalism
and expertise which Catch Me If You Can clearly exposes as false
– this time, it’s all too easy to see past these pinstripes.
23rd
February, 2003
(seen 18th January, UCI MetroCentre, Gateshead)
click here
for a much shorter version of this review
by Neil
Young
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