|
...As an alternative
to eggnog, it's Spielberg Lite: fizzy, refreshing,
and tasty.
...Catch
Me If You Can is an uncharacteristically
breezy, relaxed holiday attraction from the
prodigiously talented director of dramatic masterworks
(Schindler's List),
fanciful classics (E.T.:
The Extra-Terrestrial), suspenseful
thrillers (Jaws),
and intense genre pieces (Minority
Report).
...And while this
fact-based drama about a con artiste doesn't
exactly get away with grand larceny of your
emotions, it stll manages to hijack your mind
and heart for a couple of enjoyably escapist
hours.
...Catch
Me If You Can is based on the best-selling
1980 autobiography of flimflam prodigy Frank
Abagnale, whose life and criminal career always
had movie written--well, forged--all over them.
...Abagnale, played
charmingly and magnetically by Leonardo DiCaprio
in a welcome return to the big screen, was a
cunning con man and master of deception whose
life of non-violent crime began when he was
a teenager--impersonating a pilot, a doctor,
and a lawyer, becoming the Picasso of forged
checks, and ending up as the youngest scoundrel
ever to make the FBI's Most Wanted list--an
ingenious, vulnerable rogue you can guiltlessly,
if dispassionately, root for.
...Tom Hanks--not
quite at the top of his game but not doing any
harm either--plays the dogged FBI agent (a composite)
who pursues the resourceful and elusive Abagnale
in a cat-and-mouse game that allows for a little
substitute father-son bonding between two driven,
isolated players haunted by their broken-home
backgrounds.
...This is a light-and-lively
mistaken-identity exercise, full of stings,
rackets, close escapes, and mounds of moxie--a
movie that's not trying to scale the heights
as much as clamber across them.
...It's also the
maestro Spielberg demonstrating that a crime
thriller can be sufficiently amusing and absorbing
without resorting to violence or special effects
or visual or auditory overkill.
...In short, a
swift gift about the grift and a nice job all
around.
...We'll forge
3 stars
out of 4 for Steven Spielberg's lighthearted
road trip with a young master of sheer chutzpa,
with Leonardo DiCaprio playing chutz to Tom
Hanks's pa.
...Catch
Me If You Can: catch it if you can.
_____________________________________________
LEONARDO DICAPRIO
...It seems like
a long time ago that Leonardo DiCaprio emerged
as a movie-screen icon, yet it also seems as
if he's just getting started:
...His eye-catching
performance as Johnny Depp's mentally-disabled
brother in the off-the-wall comedy-drama, What's
Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), earns
him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting
Actor.
...The romantic
blockbuster, Titanic
(1997), in which he plays the star-crossed-lover
leading man opposite Kate Winslet, vaults him
into the superstardom stratosphere.
...And he follows
that up with a double role, playing twin brothers
in the fine swashbuckling adventure, The
Man in the Iron Mask (1998).
TOM
HANKS
...Tom Hanks's
coup--back-to-back Best Actor Oscars--didn't
exacly slow him down:
...His precise,
compelling reading of a sensitive Army captain
in director Steven Spielberg's masterful World
War II drama, Saving
Private Ryan (1998), brings him yet
another Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
...He adds another
vivid portrait--this time of the head guard
on Death Row--in the powerful prison drama,
The Green Mile
(1999).
...And he pulls
off a virtual acting miracle--bringing him one
more Oscar nomination for Best Actor--for what
is essentially a one-man movie, holding the
screen pretty much by himself for most of the
running time of the improbably engrossing island
drama, Cast Away
(2000).
STEVEN
SPIELBERG
...That Steven
Spielberg should land more titles in the upper
echelon of the American Film Institute's Most
Beloved Movies list than any other director
living or dead should tell you in just what
regard he is already held:
...Jaws
(1975), the shark-hunting adventure epic and
one of the most entertaining, terrifying, and
influential thrillers of all time, puts Spielberg
on the moviemaking map that he will eventually
preside over.
...E.T.:
The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), one
of the most popular and watchable movies ever
made, is a children's fantasy for anyone who
is or ever was a child. E.T. also stands for
Extraordinary and Terrific.
...And Schindler's
List (1993) is his devastatingly
powerful Holocaust drama, an artistic triumph
that brings history to horrific but spectacular
life in the way that only movies can.
|
