Catch Me If You Can

Four stars. Recommended.

Catch Me If You Can is the story of Frank Abignale (Leonardo DiCaprio), a teenager who watches his father go bankrupt and his family fall apart. To escape the pain, he runs away from home and starts impersonating airline pilots, doctors, and lawyers, while forging cheques and defrauding banks of enormous amounts of money. But all he really wants to do is make his father proud, and help him get back together with his mother. Abignale is a sympathetic crook, but also a scared and lonely boy. You laugh at his scams, admire his audactity, and feel sorrow for his inability to heal his family's wounds. It's a fine tragic comedy, beautifully filmed, with nice performances all round. (If only it didn't have the traditional Spielberg "false endings", where you think the film is over, only for it to roll on for another ten minutes. Twice.)