Catch Me if You Can
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Catch Me If You Can is 2002 Academy Award -nominated film set in the 1960s. It was co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and adapted by Jeff Nathanson loosely from the book by Frank Abagnale Jr. and Stan Redding. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks. The movie states that it was inspired by the true life story of Abagnale; the movie diverges somewhat from the real events as reported in Abagnale's book on his exploits. The film was a critical and commercial success and is well regarded for John Williams' score and its title sequence. The lead actors are Leonardo DiCaprio (as Abagnale) and Tom Hanks (as his FBI pursuer), with a supporting role by Christopher Walken (as Abagnale's father). Williams and Walken were nominated for Academy Awards.[1]
PlotThe film begins in 1969, with an FBI agent, Carl Hanratty Jr. (Tom Hanks), arriving at a French prison to meet the sick Frank Abagnale Jr., who attempts to escape. The scene flashes back six years earlier. Frank's father, Frank Sr. cons a woman into lending him a suit for Frank Jr., who later acts as a driver for Frank Sr. (Christopher Walken) in a ruse to get a loan from Chase Manhattan Bank. When the loan is denied (due to a series of IRS tax frauds by Frank Sr.), the family is forced to move from their grand home to a small apartment, with tension building between the family. Frank soon realizes that his mother is having an adulterous affair with the bank agent as well. Frank Jr., feeling he will not fit in at his new school, poses as a substitute teacher in a French class for a short time. Eventually, tension builds between Frank’s mother and father, who file for divorce and ask Frank to choose who he will live with. Horrified, he runs away from home, using checks that his father had given him. When Frank runs out of money, he begins to use confidence scams. Eventually, Frank’s cons grow bolder and he impersonates an airline pilot. He forges Pan Am payroll checks and succeeds in stealing over 2.8 million dollars. Image:09catchme.jpg
"Airline pilot" Frank Abagnale
Meanwhile Carl Hanratty, a humorless FBI agent, begins to track down Frank in spite of his superiors not putting much importance on the case, as most of them do not look at bank fraud seriously. Tracking Frank to a hotel, Carl discovers to his surprise that he is still in the hotel and runs into his room to arrest him. Not knowing who Carl is, Frank says his name is Agent Barry Allen of the United States Secret Service, saying that he has just caught the perpetrator. It is not until after Frank has escaped that Carl realizes he has been fooled. Later, on Christmas Day, Carl is still working, alone late at night, when Frank calls him, apologizing for fooling him earlier. Carl announces that it doesn't work that way and, to Frank's horror, Carl realizes the reason for the call. Frank has no one else to talk to. Frank hangs up, and Carl continues to investigate, discovering that the name “Barry Allen” is from The Flash comic books and that Frank is actually a teenaged minor. Frank, meanwhile, has not only changed to impersonating a doctor in Georgia, but is romancing a nurse, Brenda Strong (Amy Adams), a Southern Belle who works as a hospital nurse. He proposes marriage to her (at least partly to try to fix her relationship with her parents) and they travel to meet her parents in Louisiana. Announcing to them that he also has a law degree, Frank joins her father (Martin Sheen) as a prosecutor after passing (perhaps by cheating) the Bar exam. When Hanratty tracks him down and arrives at their engagement party to arrest him, Frank admits the truth to Brenda and asks her to run away with him. Although shocked, she accepts his offer and plans to meet him at an airport. However, when she arrives, he sees a devastated Brenda being coached by FBI agents, who have surrounded the area. Realizing that Carl has convinced her to turn against him, Frank escapes on a flight to Europe. Six months later, Carl angrily tells his boss that Frank has been forging checks all over the Eastern Hemisphere. Saying that Frank is out of control, he requests permission to follow him to Europe. When his boss denies him permission, Carl brings Frank’s checks to professionals who deem that the check was printed in France. Remembering from an interview with Paula, Frank’s mother, that she was born in France, Carl travels to her birthplace of Montrichard. He finds Frank inside a massive check-forging factory, and tells him that the French police will shoot him if he doesn’t surrender quietly. Frank assumes he is joking at first, but Carl vows that he would never lie to him. Frank handcuffs himself and Carl takes him outside, where, seeing that there are no cops outside, he compliments Carl's ability to fool him. Then, however, the French police arrive and escort him to prison. Later on the plane extraditing Frank to the United States, Carl informs him that his father has died. Devastated, Frank escapes and returns to his old home, where he finds his mother with her second husband, as well as a young girl who Frank realizes is his half-sister. Frank gives up and is sentenced to prison, receiving visits from time to time from Carl. During one such visit, Frank easily deduces the identity of a forger by glancing at some checks Carl is carrying as evidence. Impressed, Carl then arranges for Frank to be allowed to serve out the remainder of his sentence working for the check fraud department of the FBI under Carl's custody, which Frank accepts. Although he is out of prison, he is chained to a desk job; Frank misses the thrill of his old life and even attempts to pose as an airline pilot again. He is cornered by Carl, who insists that Frank will return at the end of the weekend, since there is no one chasing him. On Monday, Carl is nervous that Frank has not appeared to work yet and is afraid that Frank has run away and ruined both their lives. However, Frank soon shows up and asks Carl about their next case. Bristling, Carl demands to know how Frank cheated on the Bar Exam in Louisiana, to which Frank replies that he didn’t – he had studied for only two weeks and actually passed the exam. Astounded, Carl asks him "Is that the truth, Frank?" to which Frank merely smiles. Carl smiles back and the two continue to investigate their next case. ProductionGore Verbinski was originally going to direct the film, with Spielberg producing, but Verbinski had to leave the project at the last minute due to scheduling conflicts possibly with the film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. James Gandolfini was originally set to play Carl Hanratty but had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts. Frank W. Abagnale himself has a cameo appearance on the movie as a French policeman, as revealed by the list of cast concluding the movie. Abagnale had sold the movie rights for his book in 1980. The initial scene of the movie recreates the real Abagnale's appearance on the game show To Tell the Truth. New footage of DiCaprio and other actors replaces the original contestants, but the footage of host Joe Garagiola and panelist Kitty Carlisle is from the original show. FilmingThe picture was filmed in just 56 days in early 2002 at more than 140 locations around the United States (New York, Los Angeles) and Canada (Montreal, Quebec City). One of the locations used was the old TWA Terminal 5 building at JFK International Airport in New York City, also called TWA Flight Center. The building, designed by Eero Saarinen, opened in 1962 and was an instant icon of architecture. It had been closed since TWA's demise in 2001. In 2005, construction started behind the famed terminal to incorporate it with JetBlue's new terminal. It is set to re-open in 2008. Leonardo DiCaprio was sick throughout most of the filming of Catch Me If You Can Jennifer Garner shot her scenes in one day. SoundtrackMusical adaptation
A Broadway musical adaptation, with a book by Terrence McNally and music and lyrics by Marc Shaiman and Scott Witman, is currently being worked on. A staged reading was held in July 2007 with Nathan Lane and Christian Borle, and Annaleigh Ashford reading for Brenda Strong. Another staged reading is scheduled for February 2008.[2][3] AwardsThe movie was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Original Score (John Williams) and Best Supporting Actor (Christopher Walken). Cast
Details
Image:08catchme.jpg
Leonardo DiCaprio and real Frank Abagnale.
Cultural references
Box office receptionBoxOfficeMojo.com: Film's reported budget: $52 million Est. Marketing Costs: $35 million Domestic Gross: $164 million Worldwide Gross: $351,112,395 ReceptionCatch Me if You Can was received very well by film critics,scoring a 96% "certified fresh" on movie-critic site Rotten Tomatoes based on 186 reviews. Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stating that "although it isn't Spielberg's best, it is without a doubt an enjoyable film to watch." Comparison with the bookCompared to the actual events described in Abagnale's book Catch Me If You Can, the film can be described as loosely based on true events. The book itself is also loosely based on the true events for dramatic effect. Abagnale himself has appraised the film as about 80% accurate while noting (as Spielberg advised him) that it would be impossible to put five years of one's life on screen without compressing or altering the details. Consequently, many exploits from the book are omitted, merged together, or shifted chronologically. Abagnale has said that the movie's portrayal of his father, Frank Sr., is quite different from the actual man, who Abagnale describes as "honest as the day is long," a hard worker, and not at all ego-driven. In the movie, Abagnale voluntarily leaves the hospital where he has been posing as a doctor. In real life, he was scared into leaving after almost letting a baby die of oxygen deprivation (Abagnale had no idea what the nurse meant when she said there was a "blue baby"). In the book, Abagnale, posing as a doctor, has a romantic liaison with a nurse considerably older than he is. In the movie, the girl he seduces is young, perhaps a candy striper rather than a nurse. In the movie, he confesses all to the young candy striper/nurse and asks her to run away with him, only to find at the rendezvous point that she has alerted the FBI. In the book, it is a stewardess girlfriend who calls the police and nearly gets him arrested after his confession. One of his exploits covered in the movie, forging checks in France, shows Abagnale running the checks off himself. Actually, he had the father of one of his girlfriends print the checks. The father, who owned a print shop, had no idea that he was printing unauthorized documents; Abagnale had given him a sample (real) Pan Am paycheck requested a "sample run." The 10,000 checks he provided were far more than even the profligate paperhanger Abagnale needed. The movie also dramatizes the capture of Abagnale in his mother's hometown Montrichard, France (outside the aforementioned print shop), with dozens of police and patrol cars appearing. Abagnale in real life was captured in a grocery store in Montpellier by two armed and uniformed police officers, tipped off by an Air France stewardess who had recognized Abagnale. The beginning of the film portrays Frank at the end of his 6 month sentence he served under draconian conditions in France with unruly long hair and extremely poor health and from there is extradited directly back to the States. In actuality, he was then deported to Sweden to serve six months in much more humane conditions and narrowly avoided being sent to Italy to face imprisonment in conditions much similar to what he experienced in France before being released to the United States. On the flight back, Tom Hanks' character, Carl Hanratty, reveals to Frank that his father has been dead for nearly two years, precipitating Frank's escape from the plane. In reality Frank's father was still alive, but died shortly before his release, and Frank was not allowed to attend the funeral as he was considered an escape risk. The film shows Frank fleeing the airport to his mother's house, only to learn that she has remarried and has a little daughter. In real life, his sister was two years younger than he was, and was also the daughter of Frank Sr. The real Abagnale, after escaping from the plane, made it all the way to Montreal and was attempting to board a flight to South America when he was apprehended. In the movie, Abagnale becomes bored with his 9-to-5 job after his release from prison and goes off on another exploit. There is no evidence of it in the book (the book ends as Abagnale evades capture by the FBI after being deported from Sweden back to the U.S.). Abagnale did, however, escape both from the airplane that returned him to the United States and from the first jail he was held in there. The relationship between Abagnale and the FBI agent, expanded as a plot device in the movie, is never explored in the book. The book does discuss the main agent responsible for his case—Sean O'Reilly in the book, Carl Hanratty in the movie, and Joe Shea in real life—but there was no contact between the two prior to Abagnale's return to the United States. In particular, the film's portrayal of the annual Christmas phone calls between the two never occurred. Whereas the movie evades or soft-pedals the sexual aspects of Abagnale's motivation (even offering several more complex or Oedipal reasons), Abagnale happily confesses in the book that most of his early cons were fueled by his libidinous desire to be with (and bed) women. The numerous liaisons mentioned (though not graphically) are mostly downplayed in the movie. Whereas Abagnale comes of age sexually at 15 in the book, the movie suggests he was inexperienced with women until he posed as a pilot for Pan-Am. Further reading
ReferencesExternal links
de:Catch Me If You Can es:Atrápame si puedes fr:Arrête-moi si tu peux hr:Uhvati me ako možeš it:Prova a prendermi he:תפוס אותי אם תוכל nl:Catch Me If You Can ja:キャッチ・ミー・イフ・ユー・キャン no:Catch Me If You Can pl:Złap mnie, jeśli potrafisz pt:Catch Me If You Can ro:Prinde-mă! Dacă poţi! ru:Поймай меня, если сможешь simple:Catch Me If You Can sr:Ухвати ме ако можеш fi:Ota kiinni jos saat sv:Catch Me If You Can uk:Спіймай мене, якщо зможеш (фільм) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
