In the expansive canon of great American filmmakers, there are few names quite as cherished and respected as that of Steven Spielberg, who has worked laboriously to earn a reputation for assured quality and an exceptionally high calibre of film, becoming a brand unto himself. His work may not be universally loved, and his career as both a director and producer has resulted in a few lesser efforts over the years (but any career that has been active for over half a century is likely going to yield a few non-starters, an inevitable aspect of a prolific career), but he has maintained quite a strong standard, even when some of his films may not be to the taste of every viewer. One of his great strengths is his refusal to be entirely restricted to one style of filmmaking – he may be best known for those immersive genre films that feature a sense of exhilarating childlike wonder and a very specific approach to the filmmaking process, but he has deviated and worked in a range of other genres as well, which has often allowed him to work on slightly more adult-oriented, complex stories, which is my personal choice for his best productions. One of his most inventive and interesting films is Catch Me If You Can, in which Spielberg works alongside screenwriter Jeff Nathanson to adapt the autobiography of the same title by Frank Abagnale, Jr., a man whose claim to fame is being one of the youngest con artists in American history, having taken on the identity of a pilot, lawyer and doctor, all before he even reached the age of twenty, in what became a cross-continental chase between the FBI and this elusive young rapscallion who seemed almost thrilled at the prospect of being a fugitive, enjoying the excitement that such a lifestyle produced. It’s a film that Spielberg spent years developing as a producer before finally deciding to take the reigns himself, and the result is one of his best films, a charming and very funny crime thriller that may stretch the limits of plausibility (which is solely the fault of Abagnale, who has readily admitted that he may have exaggerated some parts of the story), but remains wildly entertaining and profoundly compelling, remaining one of the director’s most thrilling productions, over two decades since its release.

Catch Me If You Can is the kind of film that needed a very assured hand at the helm – Spielberg may have grown to become a part of the institution as a result of being such a dominant presence throughout the years, and he is certainly not always the most exciting of names when it comes to telling stories of youthful adventure – but he is reliable, and his name comes pre-packaged with the promise of quality. While it is tempting to imagine what a more experimental director may have been able to do with this story (especially since this film came about at a time when independent directors were starting to break through and earn a higher degree of respect), Spielberg brings a sense of gravitas, turning a potentially insignificant crime thriller into a film that feels like an event, a globe-trotting adventure that sees us accompany the protagonists across the United States and beyond, a thrilling game of cat-and-mouse between a dedicated young con man and the government agents willing to risk everything to bring him to justice. Despite decades of filmmaking, Spielberg has managed to retain that jovial, youthful spirit that defined him as a younger director, and he is often willing to bring that out when the occasion calls for it, which is certainly the case throughout this film, which is very much dedicated to the process of exploring the life of this notorious criminal who believed his crimes were victimless, when in reality they had the potential to cause immense financial and economic harm to the communities that he was fleecing. It almost seems out of character for Spielberg to make a film that centres on a slightly less likeable or admirable character (although it was neither the first nor the last time one of these films centred on a protagonist of questionable value), but when you consider the entire concept and look at it from a slight distance, you start to realize that there is a lot more to the narrative than meets the eye, which is precisely what makes Catch Me If You Can such an exhilarating and compelling work.

One of the more distinctive traits of Catch Me If You Can is that it is a film that came right when Leonardo DiCaprio was at the height of his fame, so he could essentially sell a film entirely on his presence, which made the fact that he was a genuinely great actor almost supplementary to the actual process of marketing these works to broader audiences. He could fill cinemas, regardless of the quality of his performance, which is obviously still excellent, just slightly more subdued. The character of Frank Abagnale Jr. is one that any actor of his generation could convincingly play, granted they were charismatic enough to hold our attention – most of the intense work is done by Spielberg and his cohorts, who are tasked with constructing a film around this performance, rather than requiring the actors to do much outside of go along with the script, interpreting their characters in a way that was unique and committed enough. Needless to say, there is a vocal contingent that swears by Catch Me If You Can as being DiCaprio’s finest performance, at least during this period, where his youthfulness and very distinct good looks were the major propellants of his career (and where he’d only start taking on more actively challenging work in later years, after growing slightly more mature and ageing out of these boy-next-door roles), which is attributed to the fact that he’s playing the role with a lot of dedication, constructing this con artist as more than just a one-dimensional anti-hero, but also infusing him with depth and nuance that we may not have initially expected based on the nature of the film. In fact, the presence of Tom Hanks in the capacity as a co-lead could be seen as an attempt to add more gravitas to the proceeding, the iconic actor delivering another quintessentially reliable performance that may not be particularly inventive by his terms (in fact, he is playing right into the All-American image that he has so carefully harnessed over the years), but captures the spirit of this hardened but dedicated bureaucrat who simply wants everyone to follow the rules, but comes to learn about the virtue that arises when someone creatively bends conventions, which gives him a new perspective on life and his career. Catch Me If You Can is also worth it for one of Christopher Walken’s most soulful and poetic performances, one of the many impeccable supporting roles that complement the beautiful work being done by the two leads, who command every scene in which they appear.

Spielberg has always been a master of his craft, which extends to his ability to effectively blend genres, delivering works that are not only multilayered in terms of the stories they tell, but also well-constructed in how they balance so many different genres. Catch Me If You Can follows a very distinct tonal path, being the perfect combination of high-stakes thriller and deeply entertaining comedy – the life and career of Frank Abagnale is far too bizarre and unexpected to not be infused with healthy doses of humour, and Spielberg makes sure that, despite having sobering moments that point towards the seriousness of his crime and the gravity of the punishment he would face, that this is not a film that should take itself all that seriously. If anything, the atmosphere of absurdity and peculiarity works in the film’s favour, especially since we’ve discovered that what Abagnale claimed transpired in his wild youth may not have been quite as true as he initially made it seem. Spielberg’s films often contain an element of humour, but we don’t normally expect him to have the skills to make something that foregrounds the comedy quite as notably as this – but there are obviously just as many moments of very quiet rumination that shows that Catch Me If You Can is much more than just a high-flying, rapid-fire dark comedy, but rather a multifaceted examination of the rise and fall of someone whose name we may not know at the start, but who we will never forget, even if his story proves that the truth isn’t always stranger than fiction, but that it can sometimes be helped along by a little hyperbole, which just spices up the edges of what is already a very fascinating, deeply captivating story that unearths a lot of intriguing secrets that many of us may not have seen coming, with the element of surprise being the most valuable currency for a film of this nature – capturing our attention is a fantastic and worthwhile skill, but maintaining it and keeping us invested is another one entirely, which is one of the most successful aspects of this film.

Catch Me If You Can occupies a strange place in the director’s career – this is not a film that features any of his notable quirks or characteristics in a way that are instantly recognizable, which means that it was slightly experimental in its approach, which hasn’t always been a term that has been used to describe Spielberg or his work. It also isn’t a film that features too many of his traditional ideas, despite it making sense that he would be interested in this material, which carries a wonderful sense of adventure, even if it isn’t directly aligned with that genre. Between the late 1990s and early 2000s, Spielberg was in his most daring phase, working in a range of different genres and sometimes directing multiple films in a single year (the fact that this came out the same year as Minority Report is bewildering but proves his immense versatility as a director to be able to so seamlessly move between such wildly different films), and while there was undeniably a sense of fatigue that only began to abate several years later after Spielberg decided to work less frequently and focus on long-gestating passion projects, even at this incredibly prolific stage, there was a potent brilliance that drove his work and made each of his films so compelling and special in their own distinct way. Catch Me If You Can is one of his more atypical works, and as a result it is one of the few films that naysayers and cynics are able to cite as a worthy entry into his career, since it doesn’t bear the same overwrought emotion or misplaced sentimentality for which Spielberg is frequently criticized, but still has a good control of its ideas, which are beautifully and poetically placed together in this thrilling, captivating and often very funny period drama that creates a soul-stirring scenario where absolutely anything is possible. In hindsight, the emphasis on the aspects that insist that this is a true story has not aged well after it was discovered some of these events were fabricated, but taken as a product of its time and appreciated as such, it’s difficult to argue with the immense impact that was made by this film, a personal peak for a remarkably gifted and unique storyteller.