I recently purchased "Catch Me If You Can" on DVD and was quickly reminded why I find it so incredibly enthralling.

"Catch Me If You Can," one of the latest from director Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan, The Terminal), is the true story of Frank W. Abagnale Jr. His story shows three years he spent impersonating a Pan American airline co-pilot, a pediatric doctor in Atlanta, GA, and an assistant district attorney in New Orleans, LA. In the meantime, he managed to generate himself over $4 million in check fraud, all before the age of 19 and finally being caught by longtime FBI adversary Carl Hanratty. The film gets its material from Frank Abagnale Jr.'s auto-biography, co-written by Stan Redding.

When this picture first came out, I was working as a journalist and assigned to a story on the actual Abagnale Jr. giving a workshop to a group of bankers in a nearby town on how to protect their institutions from bank and check fraud. So, by the time the picture was released, I was already interested in this man's personal story.

His story begins showing the loving home Abagnale came from, which soon split when his father began having problems with the IRS and his mother fell for another man. Frank runs away from home and begins bouncing checks to make his way, until he sees the kind of special treatment airline pilots received. In turn, he gets his hands on a uniform, gets the company to pay for it, forges payroll checks and gets the airlines to cash them.

After Hanratty and the financial crimes unit of the FBI become wise to youngster's antics, Abagnale moves into another new line of work, showing his ability to sweet talk his way into any situation.

My favorite aspect of Act One is how Abagnale's ability to impersonate and razzle-dazzle people to get his way was either learned or genetic from his father, played by Academy Award® winner Christopher Walken (The Rundown) who was nominated for "Catch Me..." that year.

Showing growth as an actor is Leonardo DiCaprio (Gangs of New York)--as much as I hate to say that, who allows himself to develop as a character and as a performer. His role only stretches a handful of years, but he is able to show his character's path adding years to his face and physical.

Tom Hanks (Cast Away) dawns a Bostonian exterior as the no-nonsense, all business Carl Hanratty. This type of role is quickly becoming Hanks' norm. I like his performance in this one particularly, because it teeters a "character" role. Hanks grounds his performance enough to make Hanratty believable and strong.

Spielberg is top notch with this picture, showing once again, the man knows the perfect way to shoot pretty much any story put on paper. His pacing of this picture is its strongest aspect. However, there are sequences where the purpose begins to get sketchy i.e. the teen model/hooker scene with Jennifer Garner (Elektra) in a cameo.

There was a lot of time devoted to what boils down to Abagnale conning a hooker into not only sleeping with him for a fake cashier's check, but gets her to pay HIM $400 of her own money. By this point in the film, he has already used his powers to get women to sleep with him, so the point of this scene was lost on me.

Outside of that, there are very few unessential scenes. Spielberg somehow managed to make this picture a heartbreaking drama, an outlandish comedy and at times a soft romance, all in the same picture. He's the s**t.

"Catch Me If You Can" is a benchmark in the later half of this director's career.

Benn - Where's the Humanity?