Catch Me If You Can Released: December 25, 2002 Available on DVD and video: May 6, 2003.

Catch Me If You Can

Released: December 25, 2002

Available on DVD and video: May 6, 2003

Inspired by the true story of a brilliant young master of deception and the

FBI agent hot on his trail

Catch Me If You Can follows Frank W. Abagnale, Jr. as he successfully passes himself off as a pilot, a

lawyer, and a doctor – all before his 21st birthday.

AuthorFrank Abagnale, Jr.

Frank Abagnale, Jr. is a former check confidence trickster, forger and

impostor who, for five years in the 1960s, passed bad checks worth

more than $2.1 million in 26 countries. During this time, he used

at least eight aliases to cash bad checks.

The real Frank William Abagnale, Jr. appears briefly in the film playing the role of the senior French policeman

who detains DiCaprio at his makeshift printing factory.

Currently he runs Abagnale and Associates, a financial fraud

consultancy company.

Characters

Frank Abagnale, Jr.

• This character grows up before viewers eyes and you watch him from being a 16 year old boy who lives with his parents in a small apartment as he starts a new school to a young man who tries to make his way through the world by writing fake checks which provide him with the money he needs in order to survive on his own.

• Abagnale Jr. is always being chased by Carl Hanratty.

• He is the son of Frank Abagnale Sr. and Paula Abagnale.

FBI Agent Carl Hanratty

• Hanratty is the FBI agent that is put on the Abagnale case.

• He is the kind of person that does not pick around and when he is given a job, he is going to do it to the best of his ability and he is not going to stop until it is done to it’s full potential. Throughout the movie, different characters try to make jokes to Hanratty but he is portrayed in a way to make it look like he has no sense of humor.

Frank William Abagnale Sr.

• Frank Abagnale Jr.’s father. • Frank Abagnale Jr. learns many

way of tricking people to doing what you want them to do from his father such as having a necklace in your hand and telling a young women that she must have lost it and putting it around her neck.

• When Abagnale Jr. is sixteen, his father, Frank and mother file to get a divorce.

Paula Abagnale, Frank's mother

• She was born in France and while Frank Abagnale Sr. was stationed in her village during the war, the two met and Abagnale Sr. promised his friends that he would not leave France until she was his.

• She is seen dancing throughout the movie.

• Frank Abagnale Jr. finds his mother and another man from the bank in the apartment alone a number of times which leads the viewer to believe that she is committing adultery.

Brenda Strong, Frank's fiancee

• Brenda is introduced to viewers as a young nurse at a hospital who just started her job. She quickly falls for the young doctor who Abagnale pretends to be. Brenda tells Abagnale that she had an abortion 2 years ago and ever since then her family has not been as close. She grew up in an extremely religious home.

Cheryl Ann

• She briefly appears in the movie as being the model Abagnale encounters in the hotel and after being paid $1,000 she spends the night in Abagnale’s hotel room.

PlotThe film begins in 1969, with FBI agent Carl

Hanratty Jr. arriving at a French prison to meet the sick Frank Abagnale Jr., who attempts to escape. The scene flashes back to six years earlier. Frank's father cons a woman into lending him a suit for Frank Jr., who later acts as a driver for Frank Sr. in a scam to get a loan from Chase Manhattan Bank. When the loan is denied (due to a series of IRS tax frauds by Frank Sr.), the family is forced to move from their grand home to a small apartment, with tension building within the family.

Eventually tension builds between Frank’s mother and father, who file for divorce and ask Frank to choose who he will live with. Horrified, Frank runs away from home, using checks that his father had given him. When Frank runs out of money, he begins to use confidence scams. Frank’s cons grow ever bolder and he even impersonates an airline pilot. He forges Pan Am payroll checks and succeeds in stealing over 2.8 million dollars

• Meanwhile Carl Hanratty begins tracking Frank down. Tracking Frank to a hotel, Carl discovers to his surprise that he is still staying there and he breaks into his room to arrest him. Emerging from the bathroom and knowing only that Carl is from the FBI, Frank pretends to be Agent Barry Allen of the United States Secret Service and claims to have just caught the suspect himself. It is not until after Frank has fled that Carl realizes he has been fooled.

• Frank, meanwhile, has not only changed to impersonating a doctor in Georgia, but is romancing Brenda Strong, a Southern Belle who works as a hospital nurse. He proposes to her and the two travel to meet her parents in Louisiana. Announcing to them not only that he is a Lutheran like them but that he is a qualified laywer. Frank soon joins Brenda's father as an assistant prosecutor after passing the Bar exam.

• When Hanratty tracks him down and arrives at their engagement party to arrest him, Frank admits the truth to Brenda, shows her all his stolen money and asks her to run away with him. Although shocked, she accepts his offer and agrees to meet him two days later at the airport. However, when she arrives as planned, he sees a devastated Brenda being coached by FBI agents, who have surrounded the airport.

• Remembering from an interview with Frank’s mother Paula that she was born in France, Carl travels to her birthplace and he finds Frank there, on Christmas Eve, inside a massive check-forging factory. Carl tells Frank that the French police outside will kill him if he doesn’t surrender quietly. Frank assumes he is joking at first, but Carl vows that he is not lying. Frank handcuffs himself and Carl takes him outside, where, seeing no police, he compliments Carl on his ability to fool him. Almost immediately, however, the French police arrive and escort Frank to prison.

• Frank is tried, convicted and given a long prison sentence, but while in prison receives regular visits from Carl. During one of these visits, Frank easily figures out the identity of a forger by glancing at a check that Carl shows him. Impressed, Carl then arranges for Frank to be allowed to serve out the remainder of his sentence working for the check fraud department of the FBI under Carl's custody.

Themes

• Love

• Determination