Catch me if you can
True story too good to be true
Catch me if you can is a story about attention or the general lack of it. Attention is one of the most subtle human traits. Its fragility depicted in the movie, even though cinematically exaggarated, is actually fun! (If you didn’t notice a typo, you aren’t paying attention ;))
The movie is a typical Tom & Jerry setup between a relentless cop and a legendary thief.
What isn’t typical is the narration of this unbelievable story.
Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo Di Caprio, the Thief) is a teenager who forges his way into becoming a pilot, doctor and a lawyer in no time. All of this after forging cheques to pocket a few million dollars. Phew!
Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks, the Cop) is a sober divorcee dad who has a couple of hapless assistants. He is desperately trying to catch the Thief if he can!
It isn’t about bluntly telling lies
The Thief isn’t a liar. He is a magician. He manages to distract people from noticing the truth.
He convinces people at the bank to encash cheques for him. He flirts with a young bank teller to distract her from the forged cheque. He tells an aged bank teller that he needs money for his grandparents!
He poses as a pilot and recruits several hot stewardesses and walks along with them at the airport filled with hundreds of cops who are there just to find him. He knows that if a person dressed as pilot walks along with 6 hot stewardesses, no cop will notice that he is the Thief!
He sells himself as a doctor and as a lawyer without raising a doubt!
But House always wins. He gets caught, rots in prison.
Act-3 of the movie was a wonderful wind-down on the entire story. Fittingly, the Cop decides to make use of the Thief’s expertise in forgery to catch bad people.
What happens here? Does the Thief change himself to this boring life or goes back to playing the game himself? Go watch this masterpiece yourself.
“Epic Moment” Award
The Cop narrows down the Thief’s location and in fact gets into his hotel room. I thought the movie was gonna end right there.
What’s left!
All the equipment used by the thief for forgery is sitting on the table. If he tries to escape, he will be shot down in all likelihood. The cop has a gun.
What’s next!
The thief walks out of the bathroom and claims to be a detective.
Woah, really!
All it takes for the thief is a few moments of calming the cop down and handing over his wallet to that cop. And coolly asking the cop to open that wallet and check for the ID card.
Oh god, was the thief a detective all the while!
When the cop is about to open the wallet, the thief distracts him. The thief takes him to the room’s window and points at two of his neighbours claiming one of them to be the actual thief. And a moment later the thief asks the cop for ID to verify him.
Now that’s rapid distraction tactics!
Magically, the cop settles down. He lets the thief take the equipment and walk out as if nothing happened.
Again, isn’t magic all about distraction!
Without a doubt, this scene is the best in the entire movie.
Parting Thoughts
Fictional theft shown in recent times is more often than not about random technical hacking of banks. Robberies by The Joker and Daniel Ocean are a league in themselves. But Frank Abagnale Jr. was convincingly realistic and magically surrealistic!
