Jeremy’s Tophunder №34: Catch Me If You Can
Wow. What a fun movie.
Some random notes about my 34th-favorite movie:
- It’s the 3rd-highest ranked Tom Hanks movie on my list
- It’s the 4th-highest ranked Leo movie on my list
- It’s the 3rd-highest ranked Spielberg-directed movie on my list
- It’s the highest-ranked movie that features Jennifer Garner as a prostitute on my list
This is one of my all-time favorite cable jump-ins. Every half-hour or 45 minute window has at least one or two good scenes. It’s when Spielberg still had his fastball and knew how to make a -fun- movie, as opposed to just like, a really, really good high school play (I’m looking at you, Lincoln, War Horse, and The Post). It’s a movie that has a lot of movement (naturally, it’s called Catch Me If You Can and it’s about a career criminal and the FBI agent chasing him), and is able to keep up (or even under-sells) the frenetic pace of Frank Abignale’s check fraud and impersonation spree (he was caught when he was 21).
Obviously, Hanks and Leo carry the movie, but my favorite parts are really the minor characters. Christopher Walken is magnificent (as always) and received an Academy Award nomination. Amy Adams was great (in her first major role), and one of my own personal favorite actors, Martin Sheen, nailed his performance and remains a wildly underrated actor.
For my money, the most underrated element of the movie is the music. John Williams is obviously most known for his iconic, big, sweeping themes in movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones and Harry Potter and E.T. and Superman and Jaws and Jurassic Park and Home Alone (jeez, that’s a lot — the dude knows how to write music), but my personal favorite John Williams score is right here. It’s subtle, it’s subdued, it’s never the first thing you notice about a scene. It’s whimsical and light and has a lot of jazz tucked into it. Listening to it separate from the movie, it’s perfect. It sounds like a heist and caper movie from the 50s, which is perfect for a heist and caper movie set in the 50s.
The funny part of this movie for me is my constant back-and-forth conflicted feelings about how I want it to end. Part of me wants Leo to get away with it (because when the main character is a bad guy, you always want them to get away with it), but part of me wants Tom Hanks to catch him, simply because the witty rapport that Hanks and Leo have is fantastic, and I want as much time as possible with those two guys in the same scene. The last scene in the airport between the two of them is perfect. If the movie had ended there, I wouldn’t have complained, but Spielberg brought it all back together for one final scene and they nailed that one, too.
If there’s one thing that Spielberg does well, it’s tie a real nice bow on the end of his movies. Sometimes I hate that about him. Sometimes I want to wallow and feel kinda crappy at the end of a movie. That’s just how life is sometimes, you know? I don’t go to the movies just to get shot in the face with a joy cannon. But sometimes all the dots line up and the movie calls for it. This is one of those times. I guess it probably helps that the real-life story of Frank Abignale also had a happy ending, but Spielberg’s flourishes in the final few scenes really sell it. It’s not always what I’m looking for out of a movie, but when I am, there really isn’t anyone who does it better than Spielberg.
This is the first Leo movie that I really loved. Prior to this, I had only seen him in Titanic, Romeo & Juliet, the Basketball Diaries, and The Man in the Iron Mask, and my thoughts on him were “Good-looking Teenage Heartthrob With Above-Average Talent.” Like, he was good, but I wasn’t that impressed. And the movies were generally pretty bad. This one changed my mind though. Granted, he still wasn’t peak Leo (for my money, he didn’t fully hit his stride until The Aviator), but he held his own (or decisively won) in scenes with Tom Hanks and Christopher Walken, only two of the best actors of the last 40 years.
As for Hanks, obviously it’s not his best work, and probably not even in his top 5, but it’s another rock-solid performance that was just another feather in his cap that he really didn’t need after his insane run in the 90s. It’s not my favorite Hanks performance, but part of me genuinely loves the “Hey, it’s me Tom Hanks” schtick he does in a lot of movies, this one included. (He threw in a bad Boston accent for good measure. Yes, that’s a Boston accent he’s doing. The agent his character is based on is from Brookline, MA. You’re welcome.)
Something about this movie always gets me. It’s not spectacular, but it knows exactly what it is. It’s never been in the conversation for My Favorite Movie, but over the countless drafts of this list that I did, it probably never got any higher than 20 or lower than 40. It’s just right in that sweet spot. It’s always good. Sometimes great. Never perfect, but never disappointing. I’m never upset to see it on TV (which is important, because it’s on all the goddamn time), and every time it’s on, I managed to get sucked in. And that’s good enough to be my 34th-favorite movie of all time.
(If you’re looking for a refresher on the project, here’s my Facebook post introducing it.)
Here’s what the list looks like so far (with links to the write-up):
34. Catch Me If You Can
