Catch Me If You Can (2002) movie poster

Catch Me If You Can (2002)

"The true story of a real fake."
ThumbScore
👍 85%Google users liked it ⓘ
Critics Score
🎬 86%
DramaCrime

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Director
Runtime
2h 21m
Rated
PG-13
Country
United States of America
Language
English
TMDB Rating
8.0/10 (16,856 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
96%
Metacritic
75

Cast

Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale Jr. · 77% avg
Tom Hanks as Carl Hanratty · 76% avg
Christopher Walken as Frank Abagnale · 73% avg
Martin Sheen as Roger Strong · 75% avg
Nathalie Baye as Paula Abagnale · 76% avg
Amy Adams as Brenda Strong · 72% avg
James Brolin as Jack Barnes · 70% avg
Brian Howe as Earl Amdursky

Is Catch Me If You Can good?

Yes. 85% of real audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 86%.

Where it ranks on ThumbScore

Rank in its genre
#607 / 3335 · Drama
Rank in its year
#32 / 149 · 2002
Rank among its director's films
#10 / 35 · Steven Spielberg

By audience score, among films with 500 or more votes.

Overview

A true story about Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. An FBI agent makes it his mission to put him behind bars. But Frank not only eludes capture, he revels in the pursuit. Wikipedia ↗

About the Film

Catch Me If You Can is a 2002 American biographical crime comedy-drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale Jr., a real-life con artist who, before his 19th birthday, successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a prosecutor, forging millions of dollars in checks while being pursued across dozens of countries by FBI agent Carl Hanratty, played by Tom Hanks. Based on Abagnale's semi-autobiographical book, the film presents the story as a cat-and-mouse game between the charismatic young forger and the dogged federal agent, while revealing that Frank's criminal career was driven largely by the pain of his parents' divorce and his desperate desire to reunite his family. Steven Spielberg directed the film as a lighter project after the emotionally heavy A.I.

Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report, yet the result was one of his most commercially and critically successful works. Leonardo DiCaprio's performance captured the contradictions of Abagnale — his boundless confidence masking deep loneliness, his criminal genius serving as a coping mechanism for an adolescent's broken heart. Tom Hanks created a memorable comic foil in Hanratty, a methodical, socially awkward agent whose dogged persistence gradually earns Frank's grudging respect.

Christopher Walken received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his poignant portrayal of Frank's father. John Williams composed a jazzy, Saul Bass-inspired score that perfectly captured the early 1960s setting. Catch Me If You Can earned $352 million worldwide and is considered one of Spielberg's most purely entertaining films.

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What Reddit Thinks

r/movies
⬆ 35,317💬 2,000 comments
'Catch Me If You Can' conman Frank Abagnale lied about his lies.
Top comment: "So he cons the world that he is a master conman. Does that make him an actual master conman?"
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