Film ‘Catch Me If You Can’ fulfills my theory about Spielberg in recent times. Whenever he’s trying to make a point about something (‘Armistad’, ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘AI’) his films are great to look at but not fabulously entertaining. When he’s just trying to make everyone happy and make the audience leave the cinema smiling rather than thinking, he’s on the game and you know your in for a decent show. This is one of those films.
I’ve always had a few issues with Leonardo Di Caprio. He’s a highly overrated performer, but he has that all important onscreen charisma, something which is all important in the part of a trickster. You have to instantly believe that he would be seventeen year old able and capable of doing these things and he pulls it off for the most part. Once again, Tom Hanks essays the straight man, a part he seems mostly comfortable in.
But there is a skism in the storytelling which hurts things slightly. Its about half an hour too long. When the story reaches its natural end in story telling terms it continues and shows us a bunch of stuff we don’t need to see, which could have been conveyed in the final information cards. When you see it, you’ll know what I mean. It feels tacked on, Di Caprio doesn’t look at all comfortable in them. But perhaps I’m being to harsh, because I always like films to have a definite end …
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