A movie version of Abagnale's book was contemplated soon after it was published in 1980 but began in earnest in 1997 when Spielberg'sDreamWorks bought the film rights.David Fincher,Gore Verbinski,Lasse Hallström,Miloš Forman, andCameron Crowe were all considered to direct the film before Spielberg decided to direct it himself. Filming took place from February to May 2002.
In 1969,FBI agent Carl Hanratty arrives inMarseille, France, to pick up a prisoner namedFrank Abagnale Jr., who has fallen ill due to the prison's poor conditions.
Six years prior, Frank lived inNew Rochelle, New York, with his father, Frank Sr., and his French mother, Paula. During his youth, he witnesses his father's many techniques for conning people, but Frank Sr.'s tax problems with theIRS eventually force the family to move from their house and into a small apartment.
One day, Frank discovers his mother is having an affair with Jack Barnes, his father's friend from the New RochelleRotary Club. When his parents divorce, Frank runs away. Needing money, he turns toconfidence scams to survive, his cons progressively growing bolder. He poses as aPan Am pilot named Frank Taylor and forges payroll checks from Pan Am. Soon, his forgeries are worth millions of dollars.
News of the crimes reaches the FBI and Carl begins tracking Frank. He finds him at a motel, but Frank tricks Carl into believing he is aSecret Service agent namedBarry Allen. He escapes before Carl realizes he was fooled.
Frank then begins to impersonate a doctor. As Dr. Frank Conners, he falls in love with Brenda, a naive young hospital nurse, and asks her attorney father for both herhand in marriage and help with arrangements to take theLouisiana State Bar exam, which Frank passes. Carl tracks Frank to his and Brenda's engagement party, but Frank escapes through a bedroom window, telling Brenda to meet him atMiami International Airport two days later.
At the airport, Frank spots Brenda, but also plainclothes agents. He realizes she has given him up, then drives away. Reassuming his pilot identity, he stages a recruiting drive for stewardesses at a local college. Surrounded by eight women as stewardesses, he conceals himself from Carl and the other agents at the airport and escapes on a flight toMadrid.
In 1967, Carl tracks down Frank in his mother's hometown ofMontrichard, France, and convinces him to surrender to the French police. Frank is immediately arrested and taken into French custody, but Carl assures him that he will get him extradited back to the U.S.
Picking back up once more in 1969, Carl takes Frank on a flight back to the U.S. As they approach, Carl informs Frank that Frank Sr. has died. Grief-stricken, Frank escapes from the plane and reaches the house of his mother, who now has a daughter with Barnes. Frank surrenders to Carl and is sentenced to 12 years in a maximum-security prison.
Carl occasionally visits Frank. During one visit, he shows him a fraudulent check from a case on which he is working. Frank immediately deduces that the bank teller was involved in the fraud. Impressed, Carl convinces the FBI to allow him to serve the remainder of his sentence working for the FBI Financial Crimes Unit. Frank agrees, but soon grows restless doing the tedious office work.
One weekend, Frank prepares to impersonate a pilot again and is intercepted by Carl, who is willing to let him continue with his con, assuring him that no one is chasing him and that it is his choice. Frank returns to work and discusses another fraud case with Carl, who asks him how he cheated on the Louisiana State Bar exam. Frank tells him that he did not cheat, but studied and passed it. Carl smiles and asks Frank if he is telling the truth, but Frank does not answer, instead giving Carl input on a new fraud case.
A postscript says that Frank lived for 26 years in theMidwestern United States with his wife, with whom he had three sons, remained friends with Carl, and made a living as a leading expert on bank fraud and forgery in the FBI.
Verbinski castJames Gandolfini as Carl Hanratty,Ed Harris as Frank Abagnale Sr. andChloë Sevigny as Brenda Strong.[20][21] Verbinski dropped out because of DiCaprio's commitment toGangs of New York.[22]Lasse Hallström was in negotiations to direct by May 2001, but dropped out in July 2001. At this stage, Harris and Sevigny left the film, but DiCaprio and Gandolfini were still attached.[21][23] Spielberg, co-founder of DreamWorks, offered the job of director toMiloš Forman, and considered hiringCameron Crowe. During this negotiation period, Spielberg began to consider directing the film himself, eventually dropping projects such asBig Fish andMemoirs of a Geisha.[19][24] Spielberg officially committed to directing in August 2001.[13] That same month,Tom Hanks was cast to replace Gandolfini, who had exited due to scheduling conflicts withThe Sopranos.[25]
The search for Sevigny's replacement as Brenda Strong lasted months, butAmy Adams was eventually cast. Spielberg "loved" her tape, and producerWalter F. Parkes commented that she was "as fresh and honest as anyone we'd seen", which was an important element in the role.Christopher Walken was cast as Frank Abagnale Sr. following Parkes's suggestion.Martin Sheen played Roger Strong, as he had "intimidating presence". Spielberg wanted a French actress to portray Paula Abagnale to stay true to the facts. He asked for the help ofBrian De Palma, who was living in Paris, and he did tests with several actresses such asNathalie Baye. Spielberg had seenJennifer Garner onAlias and offered her a small role in the film.[26]
Abagnale had little involvement with the film, but believed Spielberg was the only filmmaker who "could do this film justice", despite various changes from purportedly real events.[35] In November 2001, Abagnale said:
I am not a consultant on the film. I've never met or spoken to Steven Spielberg and I have not read the script. I prefer not to. I understand that they now portray my father in a better light, as he really was. Steven Spielberg has told the screenplay writer (Jeff Nathanson) that he wants complete accuracy in the relationships and actual scams that I perpetrated. I hope in the end the movie will be entertaining, exciting, funny and bring home an important message about family, childhood and divorce.[35]
Abagnale says he never saw his father again after he ran away from home, but Spielberg "wanted to continue to have that connection where Frank kept trying to please his father; by making him proud of him; by seeing him in the uniform, the Pan-American uniform."[36]
In a 2017 presentation for "Talks at Google", Abagnale commented on the accuracy of the film:
I've only seen the movie twice. So when the media asked me what I thought about the movie, and what was right and what was wrong, I said: "First of all I have two brothers and a sister; he portrayed me as an only child. In real life, my mother never remarried; there's a scene in the movie where she's remarried, and has a little girl. That didn't really happen. In real life I never saw my father after I ran away; in the movie they keep having him come back to Christopher Walken in the film. That didn't really happen. ... I escaped off the aircraft through the kitchen galley where they bring the food and stuff onto the plane; and there they had me escape through the toilet." I thought he stayed very close to the story, but pretty much all of that. He was very concerned about being accurate, first of all because it was the first time he made a movie about a real person living. Second the Bureau had an information officer on the set for all the shooting of the entire film to make sure that what he said about the FBI ... was accurate. ... And then of course, as he later said, "I really got most of my information from those three retired agents" ... So I thought he did a good job of staying very, very accurate at the movie.[37]
In addition, the FBI agent who Abagnale alleges tracked and later worked with him wasJoseph Shea; Abagnale has said that because Shea did not want his name used in the film, the character was renamed Carl and given the surname Hanratty, based on the football playerTerry Hanratty.[38][39]
Despite his claim that Spielberg "stayed very close to the story", records show Abagnale was in theGreat Meadow Correctional Facility inFort Ann, New York, between the ages of 17 and 20 (July 26, 1965, to December 24, 1968, inmate #25367), and before that, he was in theUnited States Navy (December 1964 to February 1965).[40] Six weeks after his release from Great Meadow, on February 14, 1969, he was rearrested inBaton Rouge, Louisiana. He was jailed locally, and in June 1969, he was convicted of stealing from a local family-owned small business in Baton Rouge.[5][41] Abagnale did dress as a Pan American Airlines pilot for a brief period in the fall of 1970. He was arrested inCobb County, Georgia, on November 2, 1970. Federal court records associated with his conviction show he only cashed 10 personal checks with a Pan American Airlines logo, totaling less than $1,500. The facts behind many of Abagnale's exaggerated claims, and their inclusion or omission from the film, were the subject of renewed media reporting in 2021.[42][43] In 1978, several journalists debunked his claim that he passed the Louisiana bar and worked for Attorney GeneralJack P. F. Gremillion.[44][45] Journalist Ira Perry was unable to find any evidence that Abagnale worked with the FBI; according to one retired FBISpecial Agent in Charge, Abagnale was caught trying to pass fraudulent checks in 1978, several years after he claimed that he began working with the FBI.[45]
Catch Me if You Can deals with themes of broken homes and troubled childhoods. Spielberg's parents divorced when he was a teenager, similar to Frank Abagnale's situation. In the film, Carl Hanratty is also divorced from his wife, who lives with their daughter in Chicago. "Some of my films have had to do with broken homes and people on the run from their sad pasts," Spielberg stated:
But there are those strands that got me to say: you know, there's something also about me that I can say through the telling of this kind of lighthearted story.[36]
Spielberg also wanted to create a film that sympathized with a crook. He explained:
Frank was a 21st-century genius working within the innocence of the mid '60s, when people were more trusting than they are now. I don't think this is the kind of movie where somebody could say, 'I have a career plan.'[36]
I know that Hollywood has made a number of changes to the story, but I am honored that Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks participated in the making of the movie inspired by my life. It is important to understand that it is just a movie, not a biographical documentary.
To promote the film,Game Show Network aired the 1977 episode of the television game showTo Tell the Truth that featured Frank Abagnale. Segments were shown on December 29, 2002, and January 1, 2003, as promotion.[47]
Catch Me If You Can was released onDVD andVHS on May 6, 2003 by DreamWorks Home Entertainment.[48] The DVD was released as a 2-Disc Special Edition and included special features including never-before-seen footage by director Steven Spielberg as well as interviews.[49][48] By December 2003, the DVD sold 3.2 million copies, earning a profit of over $56.3 million.[50] For the film's 10th anniversary, aBlu-ray version was released on December 4, 2012,[51] and a 20th anniversary Blu-Ray version followed on October 4, 2022.[52]
Catch Me If You Can was released on December 25, 2002, earning slightly above $30 million in 3,225 theaters during its opening weekend, in second place behindThe Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The film went on to gross $164.6 million in North America and $187.5 million in foreign countries, with a worldwide total of $352.1 million. The film was a financial success, recouping the $52 million budget seven times over.[2]Catch Me If You Can was the eleventh highest-grossing film of 2002;Minority Report, also a Spielberg film, was the tenth highest.[53]
OnRotten Tomatoes,Catch Me If You Can has a rating of 96% based on 203 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "With help from a strong performance by Leonardo DiCaprio as real-life wunderkind con artist Frank Abagnale, Steven Spielberg crafts a film that's stylish, breezily entertaining, and surprisingly sweet."[54] OnMetacritic, the film has a score of 75 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[55] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[56]
Roger Ebert heavily praised DiCaprio's performance, and concluded "This is not a major Spielberg film, although it is an effortlessly watchable one."[57]Mick LaSalle said it was "not Spielberg's best movie, but one of his smoothest and maybe his friendliest. The colorful cinematography, smart performances and brisk tempo suggest a filmmaker subordinating every other impulse to the task of manufacturing pleasure."[58]Stephen Hunter believed DiCaprio shows "the range and ease and cleverness thatMartin Scorsese so underutilized inGangs of New York".[59]
James Berardinelli observed, "Catch Me if You Can never takes itself or its subjects too seriously, and contains more genuinely funny material than about 90% of the so-called 'comedies' found inmultiplexes these days." Berardinelli praisedJohn Williams'sfilm score, which he felt was "more intimate and jazzy than his usual material, evoking (intentionally)Henry Mancini".[60]Peter Travers was one of few who gave the film a negative review; he considered the film to be "bogged down over 140 minutes. A film that took off like a hare on speed ends like a winded tortoise."[61]
In 2025, filmmakerRob Marshall cited the film as among his favorites of the 21st century.[62]
Frank Abagnale Jr. and Stan Redding.Catch Me If You Can: The Amazing True Story of the Youngest and Most Daring Con Man in the History of Fun and Profit. (ISBN0-06-052971-7).
