Catch Me If You Can—A Profoundly Human Cat-and-Mouse chase

Catch Me if You Can works as an effortlessly entertaining crime film. But, at its core, it's a cat-and-mouse chase between two outcasts, one a lost, lonely kid, the other a grizzled loner, and the surrogate father/son relationship that forms between them. It's a hilarious film but also one of Spielberg's most surprisingly emotionally resonating. The film introduces Frank Abagnale Jr through his relationship with his parents, and the moments between the three are quite moving. You watch as that relationship fizzles away because of financial troubles and infidelity, with the story's catalyst being his parent's divorce.

The scenes of Frank pretending to be a pilot, a doctor, or a lawyer are incredibly entertaining, but there's also a bittersweetness to them. You watch this lost, lonely kid lie and cheat his way into a luxurious early adulthood as a way to cope with the difficult thoughts and feelings of his parent's divorce. He eventually makes a genuine human connection with Brenda, but that point is so trapped under his abundant lies that he must abandon that relationship and keep running. By the film's end, Frank has lost access to all of his past relationships, be it with his father, his mother, or Brenda, and the only person he can turn to is the man chasing him, Carl Hanratty. He attempts to continue the thrill of the chase, but by this point, it's too late, and he has to face the consequences and grow up. Those final few scenes between Carl and Frank do drag on a bit long, in my opinion, but I also find something incredibly touching about these final scenes. Those final scenes flesh out Carl, revealing why he's such a grizzled loner, and it's where the true bond between Carl and Frank forms.

Catch Me if You Can can be enjoyed through the pure thrill of the unbelievable story, but there's a lot more to film that makes it so entertaining. There's Spielberg's effortless skill of capturing each moment with incredible visual ingenuity, with a hazy, nostalgic look at the 1960s, and Spielberg's keen eye for blocking and camerawork that allows the film to provide so much narrative information in as few shots as possible. But, by the end, there's something so profoundly moving about how the film shows the growth of two lost, lonely individuals in the characters of Frank Abagnale Jr and Carl Hanratty.

Now Streaming on Paramount+ in the U.S. Also streaming on Apple TV+ through April 30th.