Catch Me If You Can
Summary:
The Movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale Jr., directed by Steven Spielberg, and actually turned out pretty good. This was mainly because the episodic nature of the book was sacrificed, and a bit of fiction introduced to create a plot of sorts:
Christopher Walken stars as Frank Abagnale Sr., a fatherly figure that his son adores. Jr. learns everything from his father. After Sr. is invesitigated by the IRS, his marriage falls apart, and Junior (at age 16) is asked to choose who he wants to live with. Faced with a dilemma, he runs instead.
The movie connects all his hoaxes and scams into a plot by intoducing Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) as the FBI agent tracking Frank down. Carl is a composite of numerous other agents that were tracking down the real Frank.
Frank is constantly trying to appeal to fatherly figures in the movie, both Frank Sr. and Carl. These relationships are both touching and funny, and serve their purpose of tying the movie together.
I won't spoil any more of the plot, but the movie is actually quite entertaining. It moves along at an exciting pace and is always funny and witty. It's one of those rare movies that can be entertaining to watch without resorting to a lot of needless action or love scenes. The script went through a couple of revisions, but the final draft (and writing credit) comes from Jeff Nathanson.