FilmBlather.com

"If you were a father, you'd know. I'd never give up my son."

To be able to weave a coherent web of deceit, to not only tell lies boldly and confidently, but to be able to keep track of them, hold them together, pile one upon the next not in a disorganized heap of misinformation but in a meticulously blueprinted house of cards: it is a gift I wish I could possess. To be able to do these things spontaneously, "on the fly," takes not just a talented deceiver, but a flat-out genius, and it is impossible not to respect -- indeed, revere -- those with the extremely rare capability.

Frank Abagnale Jr. was, evidently, such a man. He was a multimillionaire before the age of twenty-one and, as he confesses in his memoir, he "stole every nickel of it." Don't kid yourself: it's hard to steal that much money, and harder still to do it not with the punch of a button, but through thousands of forged checks, and countless of individual fibs, deceits and misrepresentations. Frank spent years as a co-pilot for Pan American airlines, spending his time as a "deadhead" in the cockpit and sometimes even behind the controls without ever attending a minute of flight school. He spent months as an emergency room supervisor at a major hospital with a medical degree he constructed the evening before being hired, and considerable time as an assistant prosecutor, going before the court in matters of corporate law. He learned that trade by watching Perry Mason.

The most elusive criminal of the 1960's is portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in Steven Spielberg's lively, tricky, immensely enjoyable Catch Me If You Can. For the first time in his career, DiCaprio owns a role from beginning to end, perfectly cast as a real-life, younger, significantly more criminal James Bond. He was born to play this; his looks serve him well, for once, and the 27 year-old thesp even gets away with playing a boy of sixteen. Give this kid an Oscar.

The film emphasizes the eventually good-natured rivalry between Abagnale and FBI Agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks), who sets out on a nearly religious quest to catch the guy after being humiliated by his remarkable sleight-of-hand. Hanratty follows him around the globe, eventually catching up to him and getting him thrown into a French prison; Spielberg plots the movie so that this occurs in the its opening scenes. At that point, the two men have a mutual respect for each other, and it is well-known that Abagnale eventually went to work for both law enforcement and corporate security as a forgery expert.

This is Spielberg's first film since 1991's Hook that is neither science-fiction nor somber historical drama. He is characterized by his sci-fi and Holocaust movie work, but unfairly: he's an incredibly gifted storyteller and can work in any genre. Catch Me If You Can, in fact, works in just about every genre, at times hysterically funny, other times serious and affecting. This is about as far away from the standard biopic as you can get, with no voiceover, a fractured chronology, and a story that goes far beyond "here's this guy's life."

It's an ambitious project despite its lighthearted facade, and it tries to do a lot, chronicling the gradual downfall of Abagnale's various cover-ups, his family life, and his personal life. Christopher Walken turns in a touching performance as Frank Jr's beleaguered, determined father who sees himself as a mouse who fell into a bucket of cream and struggled so hard that he turned it into butter and walked out. Amy Adams has a potentially star-making turn as Frank's naive fiancee, grinning amiably at first, then eliciting genuine sympathy as her world comes crashing down around her.

But mostly, I was struck by intense admiration for this kid who could convince an airline desk clerk that he was a pilot, or a hospital director that he was a doctor, or an FBI agent hot on his trail that he was from the Secret Service and looking for the same guy. If they had put him in comic books, he would be every 11 year-old's hero. I'll tell you the biggest thing that I walked away with from Catch Me If You Can: Frank Abagnale is soooooo cool.