America’s Dad is no doubt going to be feeling very disappointed in some of his children right now after yesterday’s events, but many of Tom Hanks’ other ceremonial offspring have been putting their time to much better use by watching one of his best movies after it was recently added to the Netflix library.
The beloved actor doesn’t play the villain very often, and while it would admittedly be a stretch to describe Catch Me If You Can‘s Carl Hanratty as such, he’s most definitely the antagonist of the crime caper. The dogged veteran FBI agent tries his best to stop Leonardo DiCaprio’s Frank Abagnale Jr. in his tracks, but as is the case in a lot of similarly themed films, a sense of mutual respect eventually develops between them.
Hanks and DiCaprio are two of very few actors in Hollywood that rarely put in a performance that’s anything less than highly accomplished, and they play off each other extremely well in Steven Spielberg’s fleet-footed biographical drama, which takes as many liberties with the true-life tale as Abagnale did with his own resume.
That being said, it remains arguably the most playful entry in Spielberg’s distinguished filmography, boasting a crackling script from Jeff Nathanson, a dazzling credits sequence and one of John Williams’ more underrated scores, all wrapped up in the glossy trappings of a stylish Hollywood genre effort that never takes itself too seriously, but still tells an engaging story.
Catch Me If You Can is currently the eighth most popular movie on Netflix in the United States, having only been added to the platform a few days ago, and it looks set to hover around the Top 10 for a while yet. So if you’ve never seen it, now’s the perfect time to check it out.