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The glory of the chase
Catch Me If You Can shows Spielberg in complete control of his filmmaking tools
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Jeet Thayil
In Catch Me If You Can, the astonishingly prodigious Steven Spielberg tells the story of the astonishingly prodigious Frank Abagnale Jr. Spielberg has a lot in common with his subject and Abagnale's is a story he tells with relish.
Abagnale was a con-man who forged and cashed millions of dollars in cheques while impersonating an airline pilot, a high school teacher, a doctor and a lawyer, among other pillars of sixties American society --- all before the age of 21. Abagnale was nothing less than a chameleon.
But then so is Spielberg. The director's most notable films, from Jaws to Duel to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind to Minority Report have virtually nothing in common with each other. Nothing that is, other than their director's deft ability to create imaginary worlds with infectious enthusiasm each time.
The only other thing Spielberg's many movies have in common is their preoccupation with the chase as a lietmotif. In fact, it could be argued that Catch Me is one long chase sequence interrupted by romantic, legal, familial and other plot-developing complications. In the process, it becomes as much the story of Abagnale (Leonardo DiCaprio) is it does the man who eventually catches him --- a harried, plodding, charmless FBI man by the name of Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks).
Hanratty stands for everything Abagnale does not but the two men strike up an unlikely friendship that evolves into a partnership with definite father-son overtones. The film's most significant moment comes after Abagnale has been recruited to help the FBI capture 'paper hangers' or cheque forgers. He is released from prison into the FBI's care.
One morning soon after beginning his new employment with the federal government, DiCaprio looks around the office at his colleagues. Each is living a half-life as a bureaucratic functionary. He realises that spending his life shackled to the bureau's Check Fraud desk is as bad as incarceration. Unable to come to terms with his new life as a drone, DiCaprio looks elsewhere for old thrills, which is when he notices a brand new pilot's uniform in a store window.
In the next scene we see him striding through an airport with a briefcase, resplendent in his shiny uniform. Hanks is not far behind. The FBI agent tells Abagnale he does not plan to follow him because he knows that Abagnale will soon be back at the Check Fraud desk. How does he know that, Abagnale asks. Look around, Hanks replies, there's nobody following you.
The point is this: Abagnale runs because he enjoys the sensation of being chased. That is the sensation that fuels the whole movie. It is the thing that keeps the viewer in his seat. It is the thing that has kept viewers coming over the years for every Spielberg thriller that arrives on their movie screens. Spielberg knows with his indefatigable movie-maker's instinct that the chase is prime film fuel. Catch Me, in that sense, is also a return to Hollywood movies from a previous era.
In terms of casting, Hanks does a creditable job as Hanratty, but what the role he does best of all is as Tom Hanks. He even tries a Boston accent for Hanratty. It does not always work. DiCaprio as Abagnale is wonderful. He is much better cast than in his other movie currently running, Martin Scorcese's epic Gangs Of New York. DiCaprio manages to embody the charming and roguish Abagnale at different ages in his career with finesse.
But it is Christopher Walken to whom Catch Me belongs. He owns the screen every time he appears as Abagnale's not-quite-larger-than-life father, Frank Abagnale Sr. There is not a moment in which he is not entirely believable. Watch him in a scene set in a restaurant in which his tears threaten but do not take complete dominion and you know you are watching a fine actor at work.
Spielberg is the modern master of the perfect chase sequence. In Catch Me, he has polished the chase sequence to such a sheen that it can carry a movie. But Catch Me is more than period perfection, and great casting and the ultimate embodiment of the chase movie, it is a fine filmmaker in complete control of his tools.
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