Catch Me If You Can Free

From Coraline to ParaNorman check out some of our favorite family-friendly movie picks to watch this Halloween. See the full gallery. New Rochelle, the s. High schooler Frank Abagnale Jr. Along the way, he's posed as a Pan Am pilot, a pediatrician, and an attorney. And, from nearly the Catch Me If You Can of this life of crime, he's been pursued by a dour FBI agent, Carl Hanratty. What starts as cat and mouse becomes something akin to father and son. On Leonardo DiCaprio's 31st birthday, I have the pleasure of praising one of the finest actors working today. I didn't realize what I was seeing when that homeless boy showed up on 'Growing Pains'--a show not exactly known for the quality of its actors. And I didn't see much to like about "Titanic" except the excitement of watching Catch Me If You Can people evacuating and the ship Catch Me If You Can. Also, 'Romeo and Juliet' was just corny, with year-old dialogue in a modern setting. But if he could be nominated for Catch Me If You Can 'Aviator' performance, DiCaprio must be doing something right. And here he shows us what he is capable of. Especially when Frank Jr. The strange but enjoyable chemistry between these two characters goes a long way toward making this movie work. Frank Jr. Imagine what he could have accomplished if he had stayed on the right side of the law. But his life on the run was more fun to watch. Tom Catch Me If You Can, as popular Catch Me If You Can he is, can be commended for his willingness to play second banana for a change. And he did a fine job. Martin Sheen and Christopher Walken also made an impact here. I loved the old cars and the even older songs. The clip from 'To Tell the Truth' was a nice touch. The theme song still gives me a craving for vanilla ice cream after nearly 30 years I didn't Catch Me If You Can I had time to watch the new version. This was Oscar-caliber. Too bad the Academy Awards people didn't seem to agree. Looking for some great streaming picks? Check out some of the IMDb editors' favorites movies and shows to round out your Watchlist. Visit our What to Watch page. Sign In. Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Full Cast and Crew. Release Dates. Official Sites. Company Credits. Technical Specs. Plot Summary. Plot Keywords. Parents Guide. External Sites. User Reviews. User Ratings. External Reviews. Metacritic Reviews. Photo Gallery. Trailers and Videos. Crazy Credits. Alternate Versions. Rate This. Director: Steven Spielberg. Added to Watchlist. From metacritic. Halloween Movies for the Whole Family. The Leonardo DiCaprio Collection. Catch Me If You Can Drama. Steven Spielberg. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Top Rated Movies Nominated for 2 Oscars. Frank Abagnale Jr. Tom Hanks Carl Hanratty Christopher Walken Frank Abagnale Martin Sheen Roger Strong Nathalie Baye Paula Abagnale Amy Adams Brenda Strong James Brolin Jack Barnes Brian Howe Earl Amdursky Frank John Hughes Tom Fox Steve Eastin Paul Morgan Chris Ellis Special Agent Witkins John Finn Assistant Director Marsh Jennifer Garner Cheryl Ann Nancy Lenehan Carol Strong Ellen Pompeo Edit Storyline New Rochelle, the s. The true story of an ingenious deception. Edit Did You Know? Trivia Leonardo DiCaprio was an ironic choice for the lead, Frank Abagnale was known to have resembled an adult at a young age. While in Hollywood, Leo is known for his very young appearance despite his age. Quotes Principal Evans : Mr. Abagnale, this is not a question of your son's attendance. I regret to inform you that, for the past week, Frank has been teaching Mrs. Glasser's French class. Paula Abagnale : He what? Principal Evans : Your son has been pretending to be a substitute teacher, lecturing the students, uh, giving out homework, uh. Glasser has been ill, there was some confusion with the real sub. Your son held a teacher-parent conference yesterday and was planning a class field trip to a French bread factory in Trenton. However in the film, Howe played Amdursky and Hughes played Fox. However, this was corrected for the DVD release. Alternate Versions In the French language version of the film, Frank teaches his high school Spanish class instead of French. Music by C. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Report this. Add the first question. Country: USA Canada. Language: English French. Runtime: min. Color: Color. Edit page. Catch Me If You Can () - Rotten Tomatoes

The film is based on the life of Frank Abagnalewho, before his 19th birthday, successfully performed cons worth millions of dollars by posing as a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. His foremost crime was check fraud ; he became so highly skilled that the FBI later turned to him for help catching other check forgers. Development for the film began in but dragged on untilwhen Spielberg's DreamWorks bought the film rights to Abagnale's book of the same name. Filming took place from February to May The Catch Me If You Can opened on December 25, to critical and commercial success. When Frank Sr. Paula carries on an affair with Jack Barnes, her husband's friend. Meanwhile, Frank has to transfer to public school and gets into trouble when he begins posing as a substitute French teacher on his first day there. Frank runs away when his parents divorce. Needing money, he turns to confidence scams to survive and his cons grow bolder. He impersonates an airline pilot and forges Pan Am payroll checks. Soon, his forgeries are Catch Me If You Can millions of dollars. Carl finds Frank Catch Me If You Can a hotel, but Frank cons Carl into believing he is a Secret Service agent who is also after the fraudster, and escapes before Carl realizes that he was fooled. Frank's cons now include impersonating a doctor and a lawyer. As Dr. Frank Conners, he falls in love with Brenda, a naive young hospital worker. He asks Brenda's attorney father for permission to marry her, and also wants his help with arranging to take the Louisiana State Bar exam, which Frank passes. Carl tracks Frank Catch Me If You Can his and Brenda's engagement party, but Frank escapes through a bedroom window minutes before Carl reaches Catch Me If You Can. Before leaving, Frank asks Brenda to meet him at the Miami airport two days later. At the airport, Frank sees Brenda, but also spots plainclothes agents everywhere and realizes Brenda has betrayed him. Frank then re-assumes his identity as a Pan Am pilot and stages a false recruiting drive for stewardesses at a local college. He recruits eight women as stewardesses, conceals himself from Carl and the other agents walking through the Miami airport with the stewardesses and escapes on a flight to Madrid, Catch Me If You Can. Carl tracks down Frank in MontrichardFrance, his mother's hometown. Carl arrests Frank and two years later is able to extradite him to the U. Prior to landing, Carl informs Frank that Frank Sr. Grief-stricken, Frank escapes from the plane and goes to where his mother and stepfather live. As the police arrive, Frank surrenders after seeing his mother moved on with her life and has a young daughter. He is sentenced to 12 years in a maximum security prison. Carl occasionally visits him. During one visit, Carl shows Frank a check from a case he is working on, and Frank immediately identifies that the bank teller was involved. But Frank finds the work tedious and restrictive and misses his former life. One weekend, he attempts to fly as an airline pilot again. On the following Monday, Carl grows nervous when Frank has not yet arrived at the office. However, Frank eventually shows up, and they discuss their next case. The ending credits reveal that Frank is real and has been married for 26 years, has three sons, lives in the Midwest and has maintained a friendship with Carl. He now earns millions of dollars as a bank security expert, has designed secure bank checks and has helped apprehend numerous counterfeiters. Jennifer Garner cameos as a call girl named Cheryl Ann. The real Frank Abagnale appears in a cameo as a French police officer arresting his character. Frank Abagnale sold the film rights to his autobiography in Two years later, they sold the rights to Columbia Pictureswho in turn sold the rights to producer Hall Bartlett. Bartlett and business partner Michael J. Lasky hired Steven Kunes to write the screenplay, but Bartlett died before the project found a distributor. At this stage, Harris and Sevigny left the film, but Gandolfini was still attached. During this negotiation period, Spielberg began to consider directing the film himself, eventually dropping projects such as Big Fish and Memoirs of a Geisha. The search for Sevigny's replacement as Brenda Strong lasted months, Catch Me If You Can Amy Adams was eventually cast. Spielberg "loved" her tape, Catch Me If You Can producer Walter F. Parkes commented that she was "as fresh and honest as anyone we'd seen," which was an important element in the role. Christopher Walken was cast as Frank Abagnale, Sr. Martin Sheen played Roger Strong, as he had "intimidating presence". Spielberg wanted a French actress to portray Paula Abagnale to stay true to the facts. He Catch Me If You Can for the help of Brian De Palmawho was living in Paris, and he did tests with several actresses such as Nathalie Baye. Spielberg had seen Jennifer Garner on Alias and offered her a small role in Catch Me If You Can film. Filming was scheduled to begin in January[7] but was pushed to February 7 in Los Angeles, California. DiCaprio reflected, "Scenes that we thought would take three days took an afternoon. Production moved to Orange, New Jersey and returned to Brooklyn for bank and courthouse scenes. Kennedy International Airport. Place Royale, within Old Quebecstands in for Montrichardand the church in the background of the arrest scene is Notre-Dame-des-Victoires. The film's soundtrack was released on December 10, by DreamWorks Records. The original score was composed and conducted by John Williams. Abagnale had little involvement with the film, but believed Spielberg was the only filmmaker who "could do this film justice," despite the various changes from real-life events. I've never met nor spoken to Steven Spielberg and I have not read the script. I prefer not to. I understand that they now portray my father in a better light, as he really was. Steven Spielberg has told the screenplay writer Jeff Nathanson that he wants complete accuracy in the relationships and actual scams that I perpetrated. I hope in the end the movie will be entertaining, exciting, Catch Me If You Can and bring home an important message about family, childhood and divorce". In a presentation for "Talks at Google" in NovemberAbagnale commented extensively about the accuracy of Spielberg's film. So when the media asked me what I thought about the movie, and what was right and what was wrong, I said: First of all I have two brothers and a sister; he portrayed me as an only child. In real life, my mother never remarried; there's a scene in the movie where she's remarried, and has a little girl. That Catch Me If You Can really happen. In real life I never saw my father after I ran away; in the movie they keep having him come back to Christopher Walken in the film. I escaped off the aircraft through the kitchen gallery where they bring the food and stuff onto the plane; and there they had me escape through the toilet. I thought he stayed very close to the story, but pretty much all of that. He was very concerned about being accurate, first of all because it was the first time he made a movie about a real person living. Second the Bureau had an information officer on the set for all the shooting of the entire film to make sure that what he said about the FBI So I thought he did a good job of staying very, very accurate at the movie. In addition, the real name of the actual FBI agent who tracked and later worked with Abagnale was Joseph Shea ; Abagnale has Catch Me If You Can that because Shea did not want his name to be used in the film, his name was replaced with that of Carl Hanratty, a football player. Catch Me if You Can deals with themes of broken homes and troubled childhoods. Spielberg's parents divorced when he was a Catch Me If You Can, similar to Frank Abagnale's situation. In the film, Carl Hanratty is also divorced from his wife, who lives with their daughter in Chicago. Spielberg also wanted to create a film that sympathized with a crook. He explained, "Frank was a 21st century genius working within the innocence of the mid '60s, when people were more trusting than they are now. I don't think this is the kind of movie where somebody could say, 'I have a career plan. DreamWorks was careful to market the film as "inspired by a true story" to avoid controversy similar to that surrounding A Beautiful Mind and The Hurricaneboth of which deviated from history. Segments were shown on December 29,and January 1,as promotion. Minority Report also directed by Spielberg was tenth highest. The site's critical consensus reads: "With help from a strong performance by Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life wunderkind con artist Frank Abagnale, Steven Spielberg crafts a film that's stylish, breezily entertaining, and surprisingly sweet. Roger Ebert heavily praised DiCaprio's performance, and concluded "This is not a major Spielberg film, although it is an effortlessly watchable one. The colorful cinematography, smart performances and brisk tempo suggest a filmmaker subordinating every other impulse to the task of manufacturing pleasure. A film that took off like a hare on speed ends like a winded tortoise. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the film. Theatrical release poster. Steven Spielberg Walter F. Release date. Running time. I know that Hollywood has made a number of changes to the story, but I am honored that Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks participated in the making of the movie inspired by my life. It is important to understand that it is just a movie, not a biographical documentary. British Board of Film Classification. December 13, Catch Me If You Can - Wikipedia

The book details the life of Frank Abagnale, who was one of the most famous con-artists in the 20th century. He assumed various jobs, such as pretending to be a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, a teacher, and an attorney. The book ends with an epilogue telling the story of Frank Abagnale's final capture and the story of his rehabilitation, which resulted in the creation of his security firm. Frank W. Abagnale has parents with starkly different ideals on discipline. They discover his crude, small-time scheme to profit off a line of credit for auto work that was never done and car parts that were never sold. His father forgives him. His mother sends him to boarding school for boys where he feels like a prisoner. It's not the discipline he minds nor a sense of freedom that Catch Me If You Can misses, for he is quite mature for the age of sixteen and does not mind a peaceful living environment. It Catch Me If You Can only that he has no further contact with girls, and the extreme playboy lifestyle was always his motivation. Between school terms, he is devastated when his parents decide to divorce. He runs away and takes up forging checks. He is easily mistaken for an adult, and uses this to his advantage by impersonating a year-old in New York. Soon he decides he can not stay there because the banks have questions about checks associated with an empty account. Inspired when he sees some smiling pilots and pretty stewardesses leaving a hotel, he does some research on airline work culture. After some time, he successfully fakes a pilot's license by ordering a replica plaque from a catalog as a template. He also lies his way into a warehouse to get a tailored uniform identifying him as First Officer for a commercial airline. He begins passing himself off as a deadhead a pilot riding along in cockpits on the way to scheduled takeoff points. Thus he cons his way on much free air travel. He explores cities throughout the U. In the course of these adventures, he makes a number of friends and girlfriends. Eventually, Abagnale uses his profits to advance a year's worth of rent in the city of River Bend. He whimsically claims to be a Doctor on his rental application. Consequently, he is befriended by a curious neighbor who Catch Me If You Can to be a legitimate Doctor. Frank luckily bluffs his way through conversation about their medical schooling and backgrounds. At his first opportunity, he forges physician's credentials to supplement his cover. He claims to be on a long hiatus so as not to be offered employment in this field. At first, the local medical community members respect his preference for no work. Then a position opens for head of a hospital and they insist Frank is the best temporary fit, practically begging him to accept it. Frank resists due to the dangers involved if a fake Doctor ends up treating real patients. However, hospital administration continues to believe he just wants leisure time. They promise him he will not have Catch Me If You Can do much of anything while he is on the clock. Frank decides he can scarcely refuse. He is welcomed warmly by the staff and he comes up with tricks to improve his facade as he goes. For one, he memorizes medical terms he hears, then looks them up in private. For another, he fills out forms with mere scribbles after finding that doctors do not write legibly anyway. He also gets to know one Brenda Strong and enters a relationship, seeing something special in her. But the romance is overshadowed by his fear that the FBI may be getting closer every day to tracking him down. Uncomfortable delays transpire in the search for Frank's permanent successor, and he can not entirely avoid doctor duties. On one mortifying occasion, he is relieved that a tragedy is averted no thanks to him after he did not know what " blue baby " meant. He resolves to make an excuse and resign, but notes the extraordinary good luck when a replacement is finally found, for him. After relocating, he once again forges credentials and once again attracts the attention of professionals in the field he has chosen. This time, he poses as an attorney. That necessitates the toughest bluffs yet. It turns out that a favorite topic of real graduates from his fake alma Catch Me If You Can, Harvard Law, is Harvard itself. As if it were fate, he is again implored to fill a job opening and has the hiring conditions finagled for him. One requirement is that he pass the state bar exam. He manages that honestly on the third try thanks to his wrong answers being highlighted and sent to him. When he resumes his pilot persona, he recruits his own fake airplane crew at a flight attendant school on pretense of needing advertising stills. As his confidence increases, so do the amounts on his forged Catch Me If You Can. Occasionally, in narrating, Frank flashes forward to intel that supposedly comes later on about exactly how and when his acts of fraud become of interest to the FBI. At first, scattered investigations get a late start because Frank chose routing numbers that would make the checks take as long as possible to bounce. Later, an agent named Sean O'Riley is assigned to coordinate the detection of his identity and give pursuit. Throughout his escapades, Frank has some close calls. Once, the pilots he is with get ominous orders by radio to inspect his license and have him taken to an office for questioning. He never drops his pilot act, and the exact reason for his detention is never communicated, so he is simply let go. There's also one point at which investigators unwittingly have a face-to-face encounter with Frank. Keeping his cool, he flashes his wallet open and shut as if showing credentials, then acts like he is another member of law enforcement until he can make an inconspicuous exit from the scene. On another occasion, police have a chance to arrest him but lack grounds to do so for his known crimes. Instead, they invent a vagrancy charge and put him in a holding cell. A bondsman who goes by "Bail-Out" Bailey is admitted later. He sees no reason not to accept a wrongfully arrested vagrant as a client. Agent O'Riley arrives after Frank has exited and angrily informs Bailey that, having been paid by check, he has just become a fraud victim. Frank later takes measures to ensure that Bailey does actually get paid. Meanwhile, Frank's wanderlust extends to international horizons. He forges a Catch Me If You Can, then flies to France and explores other parts of Europe. He continues his criminal pattern everywhere he goes. One day while grocery shopping, Frank Catch Me If You Can himself surrounded by law enforcers holding him at gunpoint. He has a moment of genuine mortal terror because they bark contradictory surrender commands at him. He confirms which movements will not get him fired upon, and he submits to arrest. During the prisoner Catch Me If You Can procedure, Frank makes a characteristically cunning claim of mistaken identity. This fails because the authorities have hard evidence of who he really is. He learns an eyewitness tipoff lead to his capture, but can only guess which of his former lovers it was who spotted and reported him. He serves a long sentence at Perpignan's prison, aghast at the subhuman living conditions typical for inmates. It's Catch Me If You Can dark, cramped, and unsanitary. Guards harshly forbid him to even speak. The only sympathy he gets is from an embassy liaison who regrets there are no legal grounds to get Frank better treatment and from one official when the time comes to extradite him. Frank is transferred to Sweden. He notes the contrast between the gruff Frenchmen who have come to give over custody and the petite, female official who shows up to take it. He repeatedly expects harshness from the Swedish justice system but finds it all surprisingly lenient. His sentence seems to pass swiftly enough, but he supposes his future is bleak. He is to be extradited to the many countries where he is wanted, one after another. Italy is next, and he is told prison conditions there are as Catch Me If You Can as those of France were. His survival in such captivity is not guaranteed. But then a rare decision is made sure to spark international protest for special extradition back to North America. Frank is flown homeward. The plane lands. Knowing that arrest at the hands of O'Riley awaits if he simply disembarks, Frank tries the aircraft restroom and escapes by unbolting the toilet. See 'veracity' below. Some time during this fugitive stint, Frank is arrested once more. Catch Me If You Can new jailers have an unexpected suspicion about him. Possibly because his outlook on prison life never gets very emotional, they openly speculate that he is the undercover prison inspector. Frank considers serving his full sentence quietly, but decides that opportunity has knocked. He uses his outside contact rights to recruit an old girlfriend as an accomplice. She agrees to a timetable and stands by Catch Me If You Can some payphones, one of which Frank has passed off as an official line. The prison officials call the payphone. They get confirmation that they are to let Frank outside their walls just long enough for a short, confidential meeting with someone. All goes to plan, so the girlfriend picks Frank up and drives him to freedom. He continues to live his life in fear of being recaptured.