Catch Me If You Can (2002).
Confidence, Filmmaking Wizardry and the Unexpectedly Honest Story of a Daring Con Man.
My interest in this movie was piqued by a YouTube video I stumbled unto. The video was on the topic of confidence in film. Never fully watched the video but it quickly gave me a few sexy clips of this movie and I knew I had to stop and go watch it for myself.
I barely knew her, yet I was already in love. It just felt…right.
I think this movie took me longer to watch than any other movie, and it’s only about 2hr 20 mins.
Here’s the thing. I think that (besides everything) I’m a pretty simple man.
I know I hate Avocados,
I know I love SpongeBob,
and I know that when I reach moments of dramatic conflict in film, I will push pause and take a lap around my apartment.
You know those moments, right? The point where you feel like your protagonist might actually get their due or might be in some serious trouble. Those moments when you’re attached to this character’s fate and you feel like he might just get found out and you dread it.
Well, this movie lives off those moments.
The movie follows Frank William Abagnale Jr. and a bunch of his crazy shenanigans as a something of a grand dressing for the underlying story of family, belonging, loneliness, loss and letting go.
And while the writing and dialogue is perfection and the interaction between the characters is so well done, with both the said and the unsaid being crystal clear, the cons themselves are fucking glorious.
The very first of them, the one I’m calling “The French Class" scene is a perfect example.
Frank Jr. patterns his cons on a few important pillars coined from lessons learnt from his father and those learnt as the film goes on and they include;
- The power of perception and the importance of the uniform,
- The value of preparation, and
- The Presentation.
Frank Jr. is given a hands-on lesson in the first two by his father, Frank Sr.
In the French class scene his preparation (procuring the uniform) was by accident and the effect of his perception had already been positively affirmed by words.
However, it’s not enough to simply have a blazer on and be told you look like a substitute teacher, now the presentation, the performance must be convincing.
What’s even more intriguing is the fact that he doesn’t step into that room, with the intention of pulling that off, and takes barely seconds to go from getting the idea to executing it before so much as taking a step in the wrong direction.
Every single bit of his movements are intentional and measured, his word choices and mannerisms are exact.
But he’s not given the hearts and minds of his marks on a platter, there’s a fair bit of push back.
Some hesitation here, some murmurs there.
But every time he faced some of that, he just pushed on. He grabbed hold of the scene. Where he could’ve flustered, His voice only got louder, only got more commanding.
If the audience wasn’t in on it, he would’ve had us too.
At this point his confidence doesn’t feel normal or learned. He treats his father’s words and methods like gospel but yet it’s his confidence in his performance (something that even his father didn’t have down) that puts his shenanigans out of the realm of reasonable doubt.
Now as this goes on, another wrinkle develops. The scheduled substitute teacher arrives for her class.
Steven Spielberg is very intentional with the little things in this movie. You know those moments of dramatic conflict I was taking about? This movie not only lives off them, it seeks them out.
The movie seems to hold the shot for a just a moment. Letting the characters do those little half-second stares, and those quick-fire games of poker-face underlined by the understanding between the audience and the main character of the potential consequence of legal trouble or at the very very least profound embarrassment for failure.
It doesn’t actually slow down the time but it definitely feels like it does.
There’s some real tension in these moments. Not quite “Monsieur LaPadite" tension but, I think I would say, more akin to the feeling of watching a someone sneaking through a maze of Velociraptors or something random like that, with different stakes even though it only comes moments at a time before it comes in chunks.
So the substitute teacher walks in, she has a confused look on her face and says something about how the school sent for her to cover for Roberta.
I immediately hit pause.
At this point you’re thinking “He’s done, now” “He’s been caught".
But that’d be you.
Frank Jr., on the other hand, simply leans in the direction of this substitute and says in a cool, conversational tone:
“I always sub for Roberta”.
And then demanded that a student continue reading from the text. And with that he successfully and quite effortlessly debased the admittedly shaky trust between the school and this substitute.
The pause right there barely lasts a second but you can feel the subtle waving tension and afterwards you’re left thinking
“I can’t believe this motherf---er actually pulled this off”.
And that scale just keeps ticking up from there.
Going from scheme to scheme, from “The French Class", to the Pan Am montage, and so on, it keeps getting more complicated, more tricky, they just keep upping the ante, piling on and adding more wrinkles to the facade.
Yet he just keeps going, doubling and tripling down when in any kind of doubt. His confidence in these situations is astounding and it mostly defies explanation.
Throughout, his main superpowers include attentiveness, intuition, repetition and charm.
He soaks up information, sometimes from movies or TV and sometimes charming unwitting informants using tricks he copies from his father’s playbook verbatim and keeps digging until he hits a weakness, a blind spot.
The movie, on a technical and story level, is acutely aware that they have early 2000’s Leonardo DiCaprio at the Centre-Forward position to bang home proverbial tap-ins like only he can. Thus, on the one hand, the movie leverages on his age and appearance quite comfortably and, on the other, where the blind spot is the human factor his charms will usually suffice to get him what he wants.
In general, he identifies a blind spot, devises a plan to perfectly abuse said blind spot. And he just goes for it. Going deeper and deeper and he does this again and again and again.
It took me a bit of time to watch the French Class scene. Maybe because I tend to over-analyse these scenes
Maybe.
But that feeling, that tension it permeates the entire of the movie, from punctuating montages to forming the intrigue behind entire scenes.
It could have you glued to it, hypnotized even. It had me taking a lot of pauses.
Now, you may think that one would grow numb and weary to the sensation at some point and that should be true. It should be but there’s a few things or tricks, if you may, preventing that.
Now, typically I don’t think that whether or not a movie is based on a true story affects much of anything as regards the actual movie but I think it doesn’t little bit here, but that would only affect anything if you knew about Frank William Abagnale’s story before coming into the movie.
Of great importance, however, is what’s done with the very first scene.
The very first scene in this movie does this odd thing where it tells you how the movie is gonna end.
Before the characters are introduced, before the setting is placed before any kind of conflict.
And then the very next scene is set years ahead from the earliest point in the story proper.
You’re given an unmistakable view of the character’s future and the story’s then told up until it catches up to there.
Then you’ll have a lot of crazy adventures with this character. He gets all this money, pulls all these stunts and makes it with a couple beautiful women and, more importantly, he’s charming, likeable and he’s a kid. You’ll grow attached to him.
Now when those moments come, those tension pockets that finely punctuate the movie, the viewer will be watching while consciously or sub-consciously thinking:
"is it gonna be here? Or is it gonna be here??"
Now, because of the fact that it is based on a true story, and because you have been treated to a look into the future, it's unreasonable to think that he'll just keep going in this way ad infinitum.
So you know it’s not gonna last forever. You know the next one might just be it but you just don’t want him to lose this one.
Also of great importance to the tension is the consequence.
As the movie keeps going on, the Cons keeps getting deeper, the liability keeps getting steeper. As soon as the main antagonist is introduced, our protagonist’s actions stop being random hits on faceless organizations that’ll never see him again. Now there’s someone keeping proper tabs on his liabilities.
You’re exposed to the reality of the numbers from episodically to cumulatively. Hundreds become thousands, and then thousands become millions.
At that point, some real trouble will follow from any slip-ups.
So really when you hit those moments you desperately don’t want him to get caught, yet you can’t hope he’ll never get caught and you know that the longer this goes on the greater the eventual consequence.
Those are the tricks the movie employs to keep you engaged and at its mercy.
But this character’s confidence is at a level where you have to wonder if it’s even a factor, bold, daring, whatever you wanna call it. He believes so strongly in his own methods and is just crazy enough to go for it with no safety net.
But he’s not a psychopath, he’s not oblivious to the consequences, he’s just a little better than them, faster than them.
But he betrays his own infallible suave with his own facial expressions sometimes.
He’s somewhere comfortably between lost boy and adrenaline junkie and it’s intriguing to watch.
That’s part of why this movie doesn’t quite feel like anything I’ve seen before. It doesn’t feel like a tale of great American fortune like an "American Made". It was never really about luck. It also doesn’t quite feel like a Ocean’s heist movie type or even like a movie like "Focus".
There’s just something about the character’s innate and in depth ability to understand how people think and subtly cover the edges of reasonable disbelief ( the doctor’s note crease as an example ) while not really having any in-story reason why he would be so good at such along with his story-based depth as a character that is brilliant, really.
He’s a kid. His isn’t a story of a grizzled, experienced old con man who’s seen it all or conversely the tale of a young classically trained prodigy who’s been at this since he was four.
He’s just a kid who takes off running one day and gets pretty far. Which is particularly intriguing and also a little freeing.
And it never was about cheating for the sake of it either. It was more about zeroing in on a way, any way for him to get what he wants. Whatever way he could.
Which is why when the running question “How did you cheat the bar exam in Louisiana?" is finally addressed, it’s not surprising, it just makes perfect sense and by that point is an easy guess and altogether is just yet another barely believable feat from this character.
Through the different crazy schemes, I can’t quite believe how simple he makes all of it seem. And after the Barry Allen Scene I had properly formulated my opinion on him.
You see, we’ve been treated to a lot of legit genius-build characters in entertainment but, honestly, Frank William Abagnale Jr. is one of the most if not the most impressive protagonist I have ever seen.
When the antagonist is introduced to the protagonist, the movie changes, becoming more of a match between Frank and Mr. Carl Hanratty. (Hence, “Catch Me If You Can”)
It’s enthralling, but at some point, you begin to feel like It’s a match that Frank is trying to lose.
Frank’s major motivation is his family. He idealizes his family life as it once was and struggles to keep it even as things steadily devolve. He feels like he can fix everything, feels like he has to. As the movie goes on, the years go by and after some increasingly depressing conversations with his father he, at some point, realizes that he can’t, not really.
Although it wasn’t quite crystalized in his own mind. Not until the "Where’s your mommy?" scene after his last great escape.
But in the run-time of the movie on the curve to this realization, despite all the money, the dressing like James Bond and the foreign sports cars, he spends a lot of his time alone.
With no one and nowhere to really call home.
Seeking desperately for someone he could be honest with and somewhere to belong to.
He just wanted it to be over.
He constantly leaves behind a trial of careless or subconscious hints and clues from the subtle to the not so subtle and eventually he leads Hanratty to disrupt everything.
Then comes the Miami International Airport Scene.
You see, in one of the earliest scenes In this movie, Frank Sr. intends to have a meeting with the bank because he’s having some money troubles. And for this he wakes up his kid (Frank Jr.), rents him a suit gets him to dress up like a chauffeur and then starts giving orders.
Frank Jr: “What’s Next?”
Sr: “Okay. Stop Grinning. When I get inside, go back to the front seat and wait.”
“Even if a cop comes and writes you a ticket, don’t move the car, understood?”
Frank Jr: “Dad, what’s all this for?”
Sr: “You know why the Yankees always win, Frank?”
Frank Jr: “Because they have Mickey Mantle?”
Sr: “No, it’s because the other teams can’t stop staring at those damn pinstripes.”
And it a lot of ways, the Miami International Airport scene is the most excellent actualisation of his father’s preachings, The Pinstripes Principle.
It is the perfect storm of the power of perception in the importance of the uniform, the meticulous and intentional preparation and glorious presentation in the most bold and daring manner yet.
It was for all the marbles. He gambled everything right there. You really have to see it to believe it.
The Pinstripes Play, It is most definitely his Magnum Opus.
That effectively ends the match between Hanratty and Frank. For a long while.
Then time passes and being a creature of pattern leads Hanratty right to him.
We catch up to present time. Then, prompted by Frank’s questions, Hanratty makes a reveal that shatters Frank’s world, sets him right back to that kid that always seems to be running from something.
Then "Where's Your Mommy?" scene happens and at that point he realizes he can't keep running anymore.
That and the subsequent scenes also helped to expose the profound emptiness of his person. When no one is chasing, and when there’s nothing to run from.
It wasn’t quite until the very last scene before he completes his arc. The point where the kid who always seems to be running from something, stops.
Now, on a technical level, I know I’ve mentioned Steven Spielberg directing but generally from a creative standpoint, this movie is special.
As I’m sure you’ve seen by now, the way the movie is shot is absolutely gorgeous. On the other hand, John Williams does some of the stuff only John Williams can do in such a subtle, understated way with the music, perfectly matching the feel of the movie.
The acting performances from Martin Sheen all the way to Amy Adams and Ellen Pompeo back to Christopher Walken and especially Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks (which is a duo or Protagonist/Antagonist pair that I did not know I needed to see before I saw this) were great.
It’s an all-star cast on every level of this movie.
And some more on Steven Spielberg’s directing, I’ve talked about how the subtle decisions greatly affect the experience of this movie yet the most loud, maximalist scene, the flashpoint that launches off the movie in earnest is my favorite scene and it’s the most beautiful and yet to the point of any such scene I’ve ever seen.
And in general it’s the balance, the shifting tonal balance well in tune with the different stages of the film. it’s all a part of the act, the filmmaking wizardry.
In general, It's a movie that knows what it is and does exactly what it wants with every single shot.
And that thing, that often elusive, immeasurable quality, the feel of the movie is absolutely perfect.
I’m saying all this because I’ve watched a lot things in my day and I can say I have enjoyed quite a lot of movies but Catch Me If You Can is one of those movies that I admire.
I am profoundly envious of anyone who had anything to do with the making of this movie.
