By EWAN McDONALD
(Herald rating: * * * *)
DVD and video viewers will be seeing a lot of Leonardo DiCaprio in the next few weeks. Here he teams up with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks in a crime caper based on a true story; in a few weeks he'll turn up
in Gangs of New York, working with Martin Scorsese and Daniel Day-Lewis in ahistorical romp, also based on fact.
DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale jnr, growing up in a Norman Rockwell cover painting on Long Island in Eisenhower's America with his middle-class parents (Chris-topher Walken and Nathalie Baye) until Internal Revenue investigates Dad and Mum marries his
best friend. Frank jnr runs away to the big city and solves his immediate cashflow problems by forging cheques.
Soon Abagnale is not only passing cheques, he's also passing himself off as a Pan Am pilot, a medical specialist, ahistory professor and as a DA in Florida without benefit of auniversity education.
It's the little things that catch you out, however. Abagnale can't help himself, he has to keep cashing fake cheques, $2 million worth in 26 countries, and the FBI is on his tail. The Bureau in this case is Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) and as the two conti
nue their cat-and-mouse game to its inevitable outcome, they share a kind of mutual admiration for each other's skills. Spielberg, cleverly, hardly ever puts the two actors on screen together.
Great story, told by the master storyteller, with far more than two excellent performances (oh, look, there's Martin Sheen). For DVD viewers, there's the bonus of the real Abagnale giving his side of the tale, too.
DVD features: movie (141min); 6 features — Behind the Camera, Casting of the Film, Scoring Catch Me ... , Frank Abagnale: Between Reality and Fiction, The FBI Perspective, In Closing; photo galleries; cast and crew biographies; production notes.
