Catch Me If You Can (2002) |
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Catch Me If You Can (2002) |
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| General | Extras | ||
| Category | Adventure |
Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Scene Selection Anim & Audio Featurette-Catch Me If You Can: Behind The Camera Featurette-Cast Me If You Can: The Casting Of The Film (5) Featurette-Scoring Catch Me If You Can Featurette-Frank Abagnale: Between Reality and Fiction (4) Featurette-The FBI Perspective Featurette-Catch Me If You Can: In Closing Gallery-Photo-3 |
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| Rating |
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| Year Of Production | 2002 | ||
| Running Time | 134:57 | ||
| RSDL / Flipper |
RSDL (63:06) Dual Disc Set |
Cast & Crew | |
| Start Up | Menu | ||
| Region Coding | 2,4 | Directed By | Steven Spielberg |
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Studio
Distributor |
 Universal Pictures Home Video |
Starring |
Leonardo DiCaprio Tom Hanks Christopher Walken Martin Sheen Jennifer Garner Nathalie Baye |
| Case | Amaray-Opaque-Dual-Secure Clip | ||
| RPI | $39.95 | Music | John Williams |
| Video | Audio | ||
| Pan & Scan/Full Frame | None |
English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s) English dts 5.1 (768Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.1 (384Kb/s) |
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| Widescreen Aspect Ratio | 1.78:1 | ||
| 16x9 Enhancement |
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| Video Format | 576i (PAL) | ||
| Original Aspect Ratio | 1.85:1 | Miscellaneous | |
| Jacket Pictures | No | ||
| Subtitles |
English French German Bulgarian Arabic English Titling French Titling German Titling |
Smoking | Yes |
| Annoying Product Placement | No | ||
| Action In or After Credits | No | ||
Steven Spielberg has certainly come up with a variety of topics for his films of late. We recently had the sci-fi chase thriller Minority Report with Tom Cruise, and before that the story of a runaway robot (A.I.). We now get another chase style drama set in the 1960s, with another Tom, this time of the Hanks variety. Catch Me If You Can is the third chapter in the master director's chase trilogy and is inspired by the true story of Frank W. Abagnale Jr who, at the tender age of 16, ran away from school and proceeded to impersonate a pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer and became a dab hand at forging cheques and making millions in the process.
In seeking a suitable young actor to play the part of a worldly confident trickster, Spielberg settled on everybody's favourite teenager, Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm not a great fan of the young fella, but it was an inspired choice as he actually pulls the role off quite well, alternating effortlessly between super-cool confidence man and lonely, unsure and floundering teenager.
In the early 1960s, young Frank Abagnale Jr is being taught the ways of the world by his businessman father Frank Snr (Christopher Walken). Young Frank learns that his father's business is struggling, the IRS are clambering for cash, and his mother is having a dalliance with an old friend. It is this latter event that triggers the break-up of his parents' marriage and when faced with a choice of which parent to live with, young Frank decides to make a run for it, literally - heading for New York City. But nobody is interested in helping a kid, so Frank hits on the brilliant idea of impersonating one of the most respected occupations of the day, a Pan-Am pilot. Easily obtaining a uniform, ID, and an understanding of the workings of the airline, Frank then forges some pay cheques which are cashed instantly. The money starts to flow and so do the good times, complete with experiences with women. But, he's attracted the attention of the FBI fraud squad, and in particular a humourless agent who specialises in bank fraud (the lack of humour must come from the bank bit...I know - I previously worked for one). Agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) and his cohorts get hot on the trail, tracking down Frank to New York. Of course, he is no longer there, has moved cities, and has assumed another occupation, equally as daring as the first. The chase is on.
The thrill of the chase and the means by which Frank sets about impersonating people is the best part of this film. The means he uses to get hold of the Pan-Am logo in an era before it would have been possible simply to download it from their website (if they still existed - they went belly-up in 1991) is classic.
One of the criticisms I would make of this film is the running time. It takes the good part of thirty minutes to really get running, and then it drags on for probably fifteen minutes longer than it should. The story wasn't all that complicated and I was impatient to get the chase started without all the family exposition at the start. Maybe it was just me - I've alway been impatient - I worked in a bank, remember.
This is an enjoyable romp that features a quirky soundtrack, some striking visuals, and a couple of solid performances. There is really plenty to like about this escapist romp and it will surely provide an easy night's entertainment.
This is one of the more unusual looking films I have seen for some time. It is slightly soft and at times incredibly bright. Director of photography Janusz Kaminski has used some interesting techniques with direct lighting coming from what appears to be a mix of natural and artificial sources to create some intensely high-contrast scenes. Characters will sometimes be lit by standing in a direct beam of streaming sunlight that almost flares directly into the lens of the camera. This quite bright appearance causes a fair bit of background grain to be present.
The transfer is presented in aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which is similar to the original theatrical ratio of 1.85:1. It is 16x9 enhanced.
This isn't the sharpest image I have ever seen, but this can solely be attributed to the source material. There is only a tiny little bit of bothersome edge enhancement. Shadow detail is fine, but light grain is pretty consistent throughout the whole film. There is no low level noise. Colours are also quite interesting. They are not as vivid or vibrant as I would have imagined a film set in the psychedelic 60s to be, though they are hardly what I would call drab either - just uneventful is perhaps the best way to describe them. There are no apparent problems with bleeding or oversaturation.
There are no MPEG artefacts. Aliasing is virtually nil and the small number of film artefacts present are miniscule enough to not be bothersome.
There's half a dozen subtitle tracks. I watched the latter half of the film with the English variety turned on and found them adequate. One point I will note is the usual unfortunate use of the subtitle stream for the film titling captions. There are plenty used throughout this film to indicate year and place, and the boring blocky font used is really quite confronting. In the closing sequence which chronicles what happened to all the characters, the titling captions interfere with the normal subtitles, meaning the sentences are mixed together. This is surely a compelling reason to come up with differing fonts for titling and normal dialogue.
This is a dual layered disc that is RSDL formatted. The layer change occurs mid scene, during a phone conversation between Hanratty and Abagnale. It is located at 63:06 and is very well handled, being almost invisible.
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There are four soundtracks on this disc. English, German, and French Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks are joined by a dts 5.1 soundtrack. The latter was my soundtrack of choice. Overall, this is a rather good soundtrack with heaps of front channel separation. The Dolby Digital and dts tracks offer little difference, perhaps a little tighter overall for the dts, but really either will do the job required with ease.
Dialogue is magnificent and is beautifully clear and prominent in the overall soundtrack.
Steven Spielberg has again teamed with the legendary John Williams who provides a classic 60s era score. It's quite quirky, fun and quite pacy at times. I enjoyed it immensely. The songs are sourced from the 60s, such as Frank Sinatra's Come Fly With Me, Dusty Springfield's Look Of Love, and The Kinks You Really Got Me. It even has The Girl From Ipanema and the James Bond Theme.
There isn't a whole swag of surround use present. Sure, they are used on occasion, and when they are utilized they provide decent fill in, particularly in the airport scenes such as 28:53-29:00, 99:33 and 101:39.
The subwoofer is used for the odd bump and thump, mostly when the aircraft are landing and the like. It is seamlessly integrated.
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With this being a Spielberg film we obviously get no audio commentary, but there is still a second disc containing several interesting featurettes. One note about these featurettes however, is that they all appear to be effectively the same documentary chopped into different chapters and given a different name. This ploy to make it look like we are getting more than we really are is all well and good, but the exclusion of a play-all option is just not good enough. Of the six featurettes, two are split into further mini-chapters, and strangely only one of these has the play-all option. Frustrating indeed as the ending of one featurette and the beginning of the next is so contiguous that the person speaking is almost cut off mid sentence between chapters.
Running for 17:08 minutes, this is a true behind-the-scenes featurette virtually devoid of the usual promotional tripe we so often see. Interviews with all the main cast and plenty of insight from director Steven Spielberg is offered in addition to the behind-the-camera footage.
This 28:29 minute featurette is broken into mini chapters for each of the main cast featured, all of which can be selected individually. There is thankfully a play-all option. Exactly the same format and style as the first featurette, this one concentrates on each of the film's main characters and the ensuing discussion about casting and what Spielberg wanted to get out of each role.
The score is one of the truly unique things about this film. It harks back to the progressive jazz movement of the 50s and 60s and here master composer John Williams discusses what he was trying to achieve in an overall sense and for particular scenes. Running for an all-too-brief 5:24 minutes, this is one of the more interesting parts.
This is one of those cases where a decent sized featurette has been split into four mini-chapters for no other reason than to make it appear we are getting more value for money. There is no play-all option on this chapter which is highly annoying.
The chapters are:
The real Frank W. Abagnale recounts his early life and the situation with his parents that arose which saw him take flight as a runaway. Runs for 5:20 minutes.
Running for 4:09 minutes, Abagnale recounts the moment he decided to impersonate a Pan-Am pilot, and the ingenious methods he employed to pull the scam off.
Another 2:01 minutes, where Abagnale recounts the careers he moved through after ditching the pilot idea at age 18. The ease with which he impersonated a doctor and lawyer is particularly amusing.
Runs for 3:35. This wrap-up from Abagnale has him explaining how he was caught, the consecutive prison terms he served in France, Sweden, and the US, and then his efforts working with the FBI upon his parole.
In this 7:05 minute featurette, a retired FBI agent with 33 years experience explains how he was hired by the producers to be the technical adviser for the production. His brief covered the set design of the FBI office and the look and mannerisms of the agents. Interesting.
A quick wrap up with mostly behind the scenes style images shown. Runs for 4:57 minutes AND contains the credits that are applicable to all the featurettes which goes to prove they really are all one program.
Three photo galleries entitled Cast (48 photos), Behind-the-scenes (27) and Costume Design (10). The latter features the neat option of being able to select a camera icon on the costume drawing and being shown a photo of the end-result costume as it appeared in the film.
NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.
The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on:
The Region 1 Collector's Edition misses out on:
Catch Me If You Can is harmless entertainment. It won't make the list of top five Spielberg films of all time, but it is well made, well scripted, and the acting is first class. Even poor old Leonardo handles the confident young fraudster with aplomb. I enjoyed it, even though I thought it perhaps ran just a little too long for the complexity of the story presented.
The video transfer is unusual. Dominated by plenty of direct lighting and high contrast, it does suffer from light grain through much of the film, but the colours are sensational.
The audio is solid and tight, with deep warm tones, a funky score and some great renditions of 60s classic songs.
The extras are interesting, but a little light-weight for such an important real-life topic. The usual omission of a Spielberg commentary track is, as always, disappointing.
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| Review Equipment | |
| DVD | Loewe Xemix 5106DO, using RGB output |
| Display | Loewe Calida (84cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable. |
| Audio Decoder | Built in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials. |
| Amplification | Harmon/Kardon AVR7000. |
| Speakers | Front - B&W 602S2, Centre - B&W CC6S2, Rear - B&W 601S2, Sub - Energy E:xl S10 |