Catch me if you can

This is yet another movie, from perhaps one of the most thriving controllers of all time, Steven Spielberg, and unlike his preceding movies (Minority Report, AI, and numerous, numerous more) 'Catch Me If You Can' isn't actually a directing work of art. We must therefore, treasure while it lasts, his current wiliness to make escapist films, but Spielberg's quest for seriousness makes him a very dull director indeed. The storyline is set in the early 1960s and is about a sixteen-year male, his name is Frank, who is played by Leonardo Di Carpio (Titanic, The Beach, Gangs of New York), Frank runs away from his broken home and then spent the next few years loose in America, disguising as, an airline pilot, a hospital doctor and a courtroom lawyer, and using the air of authority bestowed by these facades to help him cash a fortune in forged cheques.

Such juicy raw material could have been dramatised in all sorts of ways. Spielberg's film wouldn't have had us palpitating with tension at the constant risk of Frank being caught. Franks scams are usually accessible as comedy, and once he is set up as a professional con man, there is no stopping, well for the time being anyway. Franks expertise is taken for granted by a character keen to put the spotlight elsewhere, primarily on Frank's cat-and-mouse bond with an FBI investigator, whom is played by Tom Hanks (Forest Gump, Green Mile). The story of Frank's impostures gives the director an excuse to try out a pose of his own. But Spielberg's portrayal of decadence is totally in keeping with that 12A certificate, and the disobedience felt in the breezy shooting style doesn't carry through to the films final message, which is that law-abiding traditionalism, is eventually more rewarding ...