SOURCE: Macnab, Geoffrey. Review of Catch Me If You Can, by Steven Spielberg. Sight and Sound 13, no. 2 (February 2003): 39-40.

In the following review, Macnab maintains that Catch Me If You Can incorporates several of Spielberg's recurring thematic concerns.

1964-1969. Brought up in the New York suburb of New Rochelle, Frank W. Abagnale Jr is the teenage son of businessman and small-time con artist Frank Sr and beautiful French woman Paula. The bottom falls out of Frank's world when his parents divorce and his father faces severe financial problems due to a dispute with the IRS.

Leaving home for New York City, Frank Jr discovers that by impersonating an airline pilot, he can more easily persuade banks to cash his fraudulent cheques. Hoodwinking the airlines, he flies all over the country, leaving huge debts behind him. Carl Hanratty, a dour FBI agent specialising in fraud, is in pursuit of...