Catch Me If You Can

The average 16-year-old is an insecure high school student beginning to drive, going on dates, worrying about the next math exam and becoming a future firefighter or astronaut. Frank Abagnale, Jr. was no average teen. At that age, he was beginning to perfect his counterfeit check scam that illegally earned him millions of dollars—going on free flights as a phony Pan Am co-pilot, worrying about the FBI agents arresting him and becoming the most successful paycheck swindler in U.S. history. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the young, cunning con man who ran away from home into the fast-paced adult world. Abagnale, Jr. posed as a Harvard medical school graduate, pediatrician, secret service agent and an assistant attorney general, to name a few, even though he still harbored naïve juvenile dreams of reuniting his divorced parents to have the picture-perfect family he remembered. While on the lamb, the troubled teen develops a touching father/son relationship with the top cop of the check fraud division, played by Tom Hanks, but never receives the nurturing and security he craves. Although there’s no glitz or glamour, impressive special effects, car chases or explosions, the wit and whimsy of this real-life character can, and will, catch you.