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Catch Me If You Can (Widescreen Edition)

Catch Me If You Can (Widescreen Edition)

List Price: $14.99
Your Price: $11.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What a movie!!
Review: I still cannot believe how a young man could do what he did. And all under the age of 21. Basically, you had this young fella(Leonardo DiCaprio),who lives with his parents(a failed store owner and French wife)whose marriage breaks up,and the father keeps going in deeper in business ruin. So, the son Frank Abignale,Jr., poses as a pilot,doctor and lawyer,writing up to over 1.5 million dollars in checks. Tom Hanks plays the wily yet persistent Federal agent who stays on the case, and in turn rehabilitates him. This movie will keep definitely keep you on your toes.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Entertaining Chase
Review: The film is definitely entertaining as you follow the chase between a zealous FBI agent and his teenage nemesis that keeps eluding him in the late 1960s. Both Hanks and DiCaprio do a great job impersonating these characters. The film is mostly about the chase itself, but have some good character building in terms of DiCaprio. The question is why he is going off deluding people and we are a given a few hints here and there, but no true explanation. Do not expect a major emotional drama. It falls more into the realm of comedy. The film is high quality as all of the Spielberg productions. If you are looking for a couple of hours of low key entertainment and good acting you cannot go wrong with this film.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Better run!
Review: Leo is a has-been and a used piece of meat. You may not catch him, but you will catch a nasty social disease.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Amazing cat and mouse adventure. Must see
Review: This is a rare cat and mouse movie with so many twists and turns. Gotta see it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Zzzz
Review: Very disappointing. First problem: casting. DiCaprio does an adequate job as the precocious criminal, but simply doesn't possess the cunning or bluster to be a credible high-stakes con man. Tom Hanks gives (for once) a highly inconsistent performance, one minute confused and discombobulated and the next minute cool and calculating. Christopher Walken tries hard as DiCaprio's hard-luck father, but is too chilly to evoke the sympathy Spielberg apparently wants us to have for him. Second problem: direction. The story could have been told better. Starting at the end takes away much of the suspense. A little suspense might have kept the audience interested; as it is, the movie does not seem to know when to end, but you already know what happens, and that adds up to boredom.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Just OK
Review: Well, it wasn't bad, it had a nice ending but perhaps I was just glad when it was over. I think, after all the hoopla, I was disappointed. I can't say I'm a fan of either Hanks or DiCaprio and perhaps that's important and the reason I gave 3 instead of 2 stars. More than anything it was the story I didn't like. It just didn't come off, for me anyway. Sorry but it was just OK.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Leonardo's best work since Titanic
Review: I LOVED this movie! Not only is Leonardo a total babe, but he is a great actor. He was very believeble in all of the movie, with the exception of a scene where he is supposed to be 12, but I am willing to overlook that for all of the great acting that was going on. This film really made me want to find more out about the real person he was portraying. Really interesting, and a must-have DVD.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Moose Hole - A Decent 'Catch'
Review: It is very hard for a director to make a truly great film today but it is even harder for a director to make two great films in one year. One director who is trying to do this is already known to be one of the greats: Steven Spielberg. Spielberg, who in years past brought us such classics as Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T., earlier this year directed the critically praised Minority Report. Unfortunately the film seemed to gather more media attention over the box office battle it had with Disney's Lilo & Stitch more then anything else. Now after directing box office draw Tom Cruise, Mr. Spielberg hopes to breathe new box office life into the ailing career of Leonardo DiCaprio by having star opposite Oscar winning actor, Tom Hanks. Will the experiment work and show that Spielberg still has the directing spark he had many years ago or will this be one of the few flaws in his career?

The film follows the amazing and emotionally driven life of Frank Abagnale Jr. from his late childhood to the present day. At the beginning of the film, Frank Abagnale Jr. lives a normal life with his parents in a beautiful home but things quickly change. When his father runs into trouble with the IRS, the family is forced to move into a small apartment. This leads to Frank's mother cheating on her husband and eventually his parents divorce. Frank, alone and confused, can't handle this anymore and runs away from home. But things begin to look up as Abagnale makes a decent living for himself by disguising himself as an airline pilot and thus being declared the James Bond of the skies. Unfortunately Frank can't keep the job for long as his must keep moving so that a FBI agent named Carl Hanratty can't catch him. Hanratty is a very serious and determined man who will do anything just to place the cuffs on this little criminal mastermind. The plot for Catch Me If You Can, which is based on a true story, was very well done though it felt weighted in moments. There were several sequences that probably weren't necessary for the feature while the ending came off as being too long and flat compared to the rest of the film.

All characters in the film were based on real life people and the cast does a magnificent job of presenting a delightful true life film. It wasn't much of a stretch for Leonardo DiCaprio, who takes the lead role as Frank Abagnale Jr., to play the ladies man but it has been quite some time since he played such a young character as the one he plays here. Frank Abagnale Jr. is a confused, lonely young man who continues the chase with Agent Hanratty not because he loves it but that he needs it. He needs the cat and mouse game with Agent Hanratty as well as the conversations he has with over the phone on Christmas to fill the void he is missing with his family. Quite surprisingly DiCaprio pulls off being a young character and shows great acting ability expressing this character. Agent Hanratty may not be an Oscar winning performance for Tom Hanks but does seem to be a role that he has a lot of fun with. Christopher Walken is fabulous as Frank Abagnale Sr. and really plays off Leonardo DiCaprio in the conversations the two characters have together. It is a shame that his character us not given as good of a send off as he should have had but it is not such a big deal. And Jennifer Garner, as gifted an actress as she may be, seems pointless in this film as her character doesn't really do anything overall for the feature.

Overall, Catch Me If You Can is another good offering from the creative directing genius of Steven Spielberg but certainly isn't one of his greatest and not even close to the creativity of Minority Report earlier this year. The film is certainly a great diversion from the usual dramatic fares but Catch Me seems too slow and flat in portions of the feature. Besides those squabbles, everything else seems to click especially from the cast with the exception of Jennifer Garner's character, which has more to do with her character not really doing anything and not her acting ability. Catch Me If You Can is a nice film, though, for people to relax in without having to waste a very long time with or being too blown away with elaborate special effects. Catch this film, if you can. If not, don't worry too much about it.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A complete bore to the end....
Review: This film was very drawn out and there were some very unecessary parts in there that if they would have left out...we still would have gotten the jist of the film. I have to say that DiCapprio's performance is great...along with Tom Hanks...two great actors, that unfortunatley got caught up in a sleeper of a film!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Greatly Entertaining Comedy Built Around Personal Tragedy
Review: Pros: Heart-rending scenes with Christopher Walken.

Cons: Does not go deep enough into the characters themselves,
despite length.

Bottom Line: Leonard DiCaprio is endearing, Tom Hanks is funny and Christopher Walken will make you cry. A true story that anyone would do well to see.

Leonardo DiCaprio is Frank Abagnale, Jr. in a true story of a runaway turned counterfeiter and con artist. Frank leaves home the day he learns his parents are going to divorce, when he is forced to choose between them. At just 16 years old he goes on to impersonate a co-pilot, gleaning information posing as a school newspaper reporter. When he is on the verge of being discovered he simply reinvents himself and finds happiness as a doctor, though not in treating patients. He must lie low, because he knows nothing of medicine and the sight of blood and bone from a child's broken leg make him sick. What he does find is the woman with whom he will fall in love. Circumstances again change and he ends up working as a lawyer for his fiance's father.

Frank tries to leave all of his problems behind, in his old life, but he learns the hard way that the past is always there and that everything will catch up to you. No matter who he pretends to be, he cannot elude himself. Near the end we get to see DiCaprio's ability in a scene where Frank is on the verge of a breakdown that has been long in coming.

The man partly responsible for that breakdown and, ultimately, the one who saves him is Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks in a slightly one-dimensional role), an FBI agent pursuing Frank endlessly for years, staking his reputation on this one case. He and his partners provide many moments of comic relief, due to the fact that they are usually more than a step behind. Throughout most of the film, it feels as if Carl is just playing a game. Though, he redeems himself in the end when he actually turns into a feeling person. He realizes that he is starting to care for Frank, not just as a collar, but as a young man who's life took a wrong turn. It turns out that Carl had a reason to be closed-off, but I think the writer(s) might have done well earlier on to flesh out the character by infusing a touch more humanity.

Last, but nowhere near least, Christopher Walken - as Frank Abagnale, Sr. - delivers a beautiful, achingly vulnerable portrayal of a wounded and weary heart. His eyes convey such devastating lonliness that it is hard to watch. Here is a man who looses his business, his car, his home, his wife and then his son; working all his life to ultimately end up with nothing. In a restaurant scene, he starts crying while reminiscing on the day he and his wife met. He tries to choke back the tears and the more sensitive of us will be doing the same. Unfortunately, in more than two hours, a relatively small amount of screen time is spent with Frank's father.

Great actors can make us forget that we are only watching a movie. They affect us, sometimes in deeply personal ways. They let us see their hearts. Mr. Walken is of that class. You will want to see more of him.

Even though the movie is lengthy, it does not delve deep enough into each succeeding profession that Frank deftly slides his way into. I would have liked to see a few more scenes with Frank evading capture, by both the FBI and his "employers," and some more and deeper conversations with his father. Even so, Catch Me if You Can is a wonderful true story that is funny, tender and tragic. If you love movies, then this one should not be missed.

NOTE: Just so everyone knows, I wanted to give this film 4-1/2 stars, but Amazon does not allow for that.


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