Catch Me If You Can (2002) Synopsis

The movie opens on an episode of the popular game show 'To Tell the Truth' set in 1977 where three contestants appear claiming to the panelists to be the legendary Frank William Abagnale (Leornardo Di Caprio) who impersonated an airline pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor, as well as scammed people on three continents for millions of dollars... all before reaching the age of nineteen. Frank gets asked who caught him and he reveals the name of Carl Hanratty.The film then shifts to 1969, with FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) arriving at a French prison to extradite a flu-stricken Frank Abagnale Jr, who attempts to escape from the prison but is too sick to even make it outside. Frank surrenders and asks Carl to take him home.The film then flashes back to six years earlier. 16-year-old Frank Abagnale Jr lives in New Rochelle, New York with his father Frank Abagnale, Sr. (Christopher Walken), and French mother Paula (Nathalie Baye). Frank idolizes his father and is so proud of seeing him being inducted into the New Rochelle Rotary club wall of honor as a lifetime member.One morning, Frank's father rouses him out of bed and takes him to a store where Frank watches as his father cons a woman into lending him a black suit for Frank Jr. Frank then drives his father to the Chase Manhattan Bank dressed with the suit and pretending to be his chauffeur, in a ruse to impress the bank people and secure a loan. 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, which causes tension between Frank's parents.Frank is then enrolled in a public school where he shows up for his first day in his former school's uniform. When he hears some guys in his class making fun of his uniform as he enters the class, saying it makes him look like a substitute teacher, Frank walks to front of the class and pretends to be the new class' substitute teacher, even sending away the real substitute teacher claiming there was a mistake.The ruse goes on for a week's time before Frank is found out, and his parents are called in to discuss the matter. While his mother is upset by this, Frank's father is rather impressed by how far his son was able to go with the con.One day, coming back from school, Frank catches his mother having an adulterous affair with his father's friend Jack Barnes (James Brolin). His mother tries to buy his silence, but Frank is too upset to care.Soon afterwards, Frank comes home to find out that his parents are getting a divorce. When asked with which of his parents he wishes to stay with, Frank runs away from home, using his checkbook to con his way into transportation and shelter.When Frank quickly runs out of money, he tries to create fake checks from his own checkbook, and then tries to pull confidence scams on bank tellers with very little success.One day (after yet another failure), he takes notice of some airline pilots and some stewardesses checking into a hotel. Seeing how they are given the VIP treatment everywhere they go inspires Frank. He cons his way into obtaining a Pan Am Airlines pilot's uniform and learns more about the airline by pretending to be a college student doing a report on Pan Am Airlines, and interviewing one of its top brass and former pilot. Frank then uses the uniform and knowledge to create fake checks from Pan Am, which he successfully cashes at banks and hotels all over New-York. The con works as even a bank manager who turned him down earlier gets caught up in the ruse.Frank tries to run the same check scam at an airport, but gets confused with an expected deadhead pilot heading to Miami. Frank rolls with it, and experiences his very first flight followed by his first sexual experience with one of the stewardess.In Miami, by openly flirting with one of the bank tellers, Frank learns some valuable information about check routing. He then purchases a check coding machine from an auction,which he uses to further his schemes and create checks with bigger amounts.Meanwhile, Carl Hanratty, a nearly humorless but persistent FBI agent, has caught on to Frank's check fraud and tracks the latest falsified check to a hotel, where Carl discovers to his surprise that Frank is still a resident there, and breaks into his room to arrest him.Frank emerges from the bathroom dressed in a suit, and knowing only that Carl is from the FBI, Frank pretends to be Agent "Barry Allen" of the United States Secret Service, and brazenly claims to have just caught the suspect before Carl showed up. It is not until after Frank has escaped from the room that Carl realizes he has been fooled.Following the encounter, the information in the room and Carl's description bring no clues, and fingerprints collected in the room lead nowhere.During another interview with the Pan Am brass, Frank finds out he has accumulated several nicknames, such as "The Skywayman" and "The James Bond of the sky". Emboldened by this title, Frank purchases a Bond-style suit and an Aston-Martin vehicle that he takes for a joyride.Shortly afterwards, he runs into a magazine model at a hotel he's staying at, named Cheryl Ann (Jennifer Garner). She offers to spend the night with him for $1000, but Frank claims he only has a check for $1400. Cheryl then requests that he endorse it to her, and she'll pay him the remaining $400 in cash...resulting in the girl actually paying Frank to sleep with her!Frank soon attempts to use the money he has stolen to find a way to reunite his divorced parents. He invites his father to a fancy restaurant, and gives him the keys to a brand new Cadillac. Frank Sr explains that he can't accept the gift, since the IRS are still watching him, and that Paula refuses to talk to him.Some months later on Christmas Eve, Carl is working in the FBI office by himself, when Frank calls to apologize for tricking him back at the hotel. Carl doesn't accept the apology,and dares Frank to meet him face to face. Frank gives Carl his location and room number, but Carl doesn't believe him. As the conversation continues on, Carl soon realizes the reason for the call: Frank has no one else to talk to. Frank angrily hangs up, and Carl continues his investigation with a renewed vitality.Carl later discovers that the name Barry Allen is a character in "The Flash" comic books, and surmises that Frank might be a minor, which explains why they have been unsuccessful in finding any record of him or matching him through fingerprints.Remembering that Frank had made a reference to the New York Yankees during their phone conversation, Carl has his men check for runaways in the New York area. Their search eventually leads them to Frank's mother, who has now remarried to Jack Barnes. Upon seeing Frank's yearbook picture, Carl immediately recognizes him and finally knows who his suspect is. He then reveals to Frank's mother that Frank has already stolen about 1.3 million dollars in check fraud.Some time later, while visiting a friend at a hospital in Atlanta, Frank meets and takes an interest in a young hospital nurse named Brenda Strong (Amy Adams). He decides to enroll with the Hospital by pretending to be a doctor with a forged diploma from Harvard medical school and an impressive made up resume. He gets hired as the emergency room night administrator and makes sure to have Brenda on his staff. Although he has no medical knowledge or experience, Frank is able to influence the medical interns on his staff to step up and make medical calls on their own so he can deal with the administrative side of things without ever touching patients. Eventually, he wins over Brenda and the two fall in love. After finding out that her parents have disowned her when she had an abortion in the past, Frank attempts to help her reconcile with her family by proposing to Brenda.Meanwhile, Carl visits Frank's father who openly refuses to give up his son. However, Carl finds a letter from Frank with his address in Atlanta. The address leads Carl and his team to Frank's home, but Frank is already gone to Louisiana to meet with Brenda's parents. Carl does notice Frank's Harvard diploma with Frank's new alias which takes him to the hospital which Frank has already quit.Frank and Brenda meet with her parents in Louisiana, where Frank not only claims to be a Lutheran like them, but also that he is a qualified lawyer as well as a doctor. Brenda's father, Roger (Martin Sheen), questions Frank about his feelings which leads Frank to openly admit that he is not a lawyer, a doctor or a co-pilot but Roger takes it as just a romantic speech and agrees to give away his daughter's hand. Frank also passes the Bar exam and joins Roger's law firm as an assistant prosecutor.As preparations for the wedding continue, Frank travels back to New York to visit his father and tell him about the engagement. Frank Sr, now a US Post Office employee and still struggling with the IRS, reveals to his son that his mother has married Jack Barnes and completely moved on, which devastates Frank. He also reveals that he got a visit from the FBI and knows what Frank is doing. Frank desperately asks his father to tell him to stop,but Frank Sr encourages him to keep going instead. Incensed that his father is unable to act like a father, Frank takes leave of Frank Sr.On Christmas Eve, Frank calls Carl at the FBI office, who has been expecting the call and has his team listening in on it. Frank says he is done and settling down and asks Carl to stop chasing him. Carl informs him that this is not possible, since Frank has stolen about $4 million at this point. Frank understands and hangs up, not realizing he made a mistake by telling Carl about the engagement. Carl, having found Frank's alias in Atlanta earlier, deduces that Frank had to keep the same name when he moved to Louisiana, because he is dating a girl who thinks it is his actual name (changing his name would bring about too many questions).After looking through wedding announcements, Carl and his men manage to track Frank down on the night of the engagement party, leading Frank to confess to Brenda who he really is, before escaping out a window, and asking her to meet him at the local airport a few days later. However, when she arrives as planned, Frank is devastated to see Brenda is being watched closely by a number of disguised FBI agents which Frank easily makes.When Frank doesn't appear, Carl has his men stake out the airport, certain that Frank will attempt to show him up somehow, and try to escape by plane instead of leaving town in a quieter way.Frank puts a new plan into effect, where he poses as a recruiting pilot from Pan Am airlines, visiting a local college to recruit stewardesses to travel to Europe. He holds auditions where he picks the hottest girls he can find and dresses them up in uniforms. He then goes to the airport where he walks amongst the crowd while using the girls as a wall of "eye candy", completely distracting the agents from ever looking at him. Frank manages to walk right past Carl's men and escapes to Europe. He also uses a decoy in the unloading zone just to mess with Carl further.Seven months later, in 1967, Carl advises his boss that Frank has been forging checks all over the Eastern Hemisphere. Only this time, the checks are the real thing. Claiming that Frank is completely out of control, he requests permission to track him down in Europe. His boss however, denies him permission, citing that if Carl couldn't catch Frank while he was within the USA, he won't catch him in Europe.Carl refuses to give up and takes one of Frank's bogus checks to professional printers who deduce, from the quality of the check, that it must have been printed on a specific kind of printer that is only available in a handful of European countries, one of which is France. Remembering from an interview with Frank's mother that she was born in France, Carl travels to her birthplace of Montrichard and finds Frank, on Christmas Eve, inside a massive printing factory, printing thousands upon thousands of checks.Carl tells Frank that he came with the French police and promised them to arrest him himself. Frank assumes Carl is lying but Carl convinces him that he will be shot if he walks out of the factory without Carl. Frank agrees to handcuff 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, while Carl promises to have Frank extradited back to the USA.After two years, Frank is released into Carl's custody (as was seen in the opening of the film), and on Christmas Eve 1969, the plane extraditing Frank flies into the United States.As they prepare to land, Carl informs Frank (who has been requesting several times to call his father) that Frank Sr died accidentally the previous year. Devastated, Frank locks himself in the plane's bathroom and escapes from the plane to track down where his mother lives.His escape leads them the Barnes residence where Frank finds his mother, happily married to her second husband, who now has a young daughter whom Frank realizes is his half-sister.With his father dead and realizing his mother has moved on, Frank quietly surrenders as Carl and the local police arrive, and arrest him (before his Mom and her new family can realize who he is).Frank is finally tried, convicted, and sentenced to 12 years, completely isolated, in a maximum security Federal prison of Atlanta. During the next four years, Frank receives regular visits from Carl, especially around Christmas time. During one of these visits, Frank easily identifies a forger Carl is chasing after simply by glancing at a check that Carl casually shows him, giving the FBI agent an idea.Some times later, Carl visits Frank again, only this time, with his boss. They give him a check which he aptly identifies as fake as soon as he touches it, which makes Carl smile.In 1974, Carl 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. Although Frank is out of prison, he is chained to his desk job and misses the thrill of his old life. When he stumbles upon a pilot uniform, Frank gets tempted into posing as an airline pilot once again. Just as he's about to fly away, Carl meets him at the airport. Carl allows him to go free, predicting that Frank will return to work on Monday since there is no one chasing him anymore.Back in the office on Monday morning, Carl is nervous when Frank doesn't show up for work on time. However, Frank does show up, and the two begin going over a recently discovered check forgery that shows some new methods of forgery they haven't encountered before. As they look over the check, Carl asks Frank something that has been on his mind for years: how he cheated on the Louisiana Bar Exam, to become a lawyer. Frank claims he didn't cheat, and that he studied for two weeks and passed the exam on his own merits. Carl inquires to know if this is the truth, but Frank prefers to focus on the case at hand and presses on.It is then revealed,through scrolling text, that "Frank has been happily married for 26 years" had three sons, lives in the Midwest with his family, is still good friends with Carl, caught some of the world's most elusive money forgers and gets millions of dollars each year because of his work creating unforgeable checks.

The movie opens on an episode of the popular game show 'To Tell the Truth' set in 1977 where three contestants appear claiming to the panelists to be the legendary Frank William Abagnale (Leornardo Di Caprio) who impersonated an airline pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor, as well as scammed people on three continents for millions of dollars... all before reaching the age of nineteen. Frank gets asked who caught him and he reveals the name of Carl Hanratty.The film then shifts to 1969, with FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) arriving at a French prison to extradite a flu-stricken Frank Abagnale Jr, who attempts to escape from the prison but is too sick to even make it outside. Frank surrenders and asks Carl to take him home.The film then flashes back to six years earlier. 16-year-old Frank Abagnale Jr lives in New Rochelle, New York with his father Frank Abagnale, Sr. (Christopher Walken), and French mother Paula (Nathalie Baye). Frank idolizes his father and is so proud of seeing him being inducted into the New Rochelle Rotary club wall of honor as a lifetime member.One morning, Frank's father rouses him out of bed and takes him to a store where Frank watches as his father cons a woman into lending him a black suit for Frank Jr. Frank then drives his father to the Chase Manhattan Bank dressed with the suit and pretending to be his chauffeur, in a ruse to impress the bank people and secure a loan. 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, which causes tension between Frank's parents.Frank is then enrolled in a public school where he shows up for his first day in his former school's uniform. When he hears some guys in his class making fun of his uniform as he enters the class, saying it makes him look like a substitute teacher, Frank walks to front of the class and pretends to be the new class' substitute teacher, even sending away the real substitute teacher claiming there was a mistake.The ruse goes on for a week's time before Frank is found out, and his parents are called in to discuss the matter. While his mother is upset by this, Frank's father is rather impressed by how far his son was able to go with the con.One day, coming back from school, Frank catches his mother having an adulterous affair with his father's friend Jack Barnes (James Brolin). His mother tries to buy his silence, but Frank is too upset to care.Soon afterwards, Frank comes home to find out that his parents are getting a divorce. When asked with which of his parents he wishes to stay with, Frank runs away from home, using his checkbook to con his way into transportation and shelter.When Frank quickly runs out of money, he tries to create fake checks from his own checkbook, and then tries to pull confidence scams on bank tellers with very little success.One day (after yet another failure), he takes notice of some airline pilots and some stewardesses checking into a hotel. Seeing how they are given the VIP treatment everywhere they go inspires Frank. He cons his way into obtaining a Pan Am Airlines pilot's uniform and learns more about the airline by pretending to be a college student doing a report on Pan Am Airlines, and interviewing one of its top brass and former pilot. Frank then uses the uniform and knowledge to create fake checks from Pan Am, which he successfully cashes at banks and hotels all over New-York. The con works as even a bank manager who turned him down earlier gets caught up in the ruse.Frank tries to run the same check scam at an airport, but gets confused with an expected deadhead pilot heading to Miami. Frank rolls with it, and experiences his very first flight followed by his first sexual experience with one of the stewardess.In Miami, by openly flirting with one of the bank tellers, Frank learns some valuable information about check routing. He then purchases a check coding machine from an auction,which he uses to further his schemes and create checks with bigger amounts.Meanwhile, Carl Hanratty, a nearly humorless but persistent FBI agent, has caught on to Frank's check fraud and tracks the latest falsified check to a hotel, where Carl discovers to his surprise that Frank is still a resident there, and breaks into his room to arrest him.Frank emerges from the bathroom dressed in a suit, and knowing only that Carl is from the FBI, Frank pretends to be Agent "Barry Allen" of the United States Secret Service, and brazenly claims to have just caught the suspect before Carl showed up. It is not until after Frank has escaped from the room that Carl realizes he has been fooled.Following the encounter, the information in the room and Carl's description bring no clues, and fingerprints collected in the room lead nowhere.During another interview with the Pan Am brass, Frank finds out he has accumulated several nicknames, such as "The Skywayman" and "The James Bond of the sky". Emboldened by this title, Frank purchases a Bond-style suit and an Aston-Martin vehicle that he takes for a joyride.Shortly afterwards, he runs into a magazine model at a hotel he's staying at, named Cheryl Ann (Jennifer Garner). She offers to spend the night with him for $1000, but Frank claims he only has a check for $1400. Cheryl then requests that he endorse it to her, and she'll pay him the remaining $400 in cash...resulting in the girl actually paying Frank to sleep with her!Frank soon attempts to use the money he has stolen to find a way to reunite his divorced parents. He invites his father to a fancy restaurant, and gives him the keys to a brand new Cadillac. Frank Sr explains that he can't accept the gift, since the IRS are still watching him, and that Paula refuses to talk to him.Some months later on Christmas Eve, Carl is working in the FBI office by himself, when Frank calls to apologize for tricking him back at the hotel. Carl doesn't accept the apology,and dares Frank to meet him face to face. Frank gives Carl his location and room number, but Carl doesn't believe him. As the conversation continues on, Carl soon realizes the reason for the call: Frank has no one else to talk to. Frank angrily hangs up, and Carl continues his investigation with a renewed vitality.Carl later discovers that the name Barry Allen is a character in "The Flash" comic books, and surmises that Frank might be a minor, which explains why they have been unsuccessful in finding any record of him or matching him through fingerprints.Remembering that Frank had made a reference to the New York Yankees during their phone conversation, Carl has his men check for runaways in the New York area. Their search eventually leads them to Frank's mother, who has now remarried to Jack Barnes. Upon seeing Frank's yearbook picture, Carl immediately recognizes him and finally knows who his suspect is. He then reveals to Frank's mother that Frank has already stolen about 1.3 million dollars in check fraud.Some time later, while visiting a friend at a hospital in Atlanta, Frank meets and takes an interest in a young hospital nurse named Brenda Strong (Amy Adams). He decides to enroll with the Hospital by pretending to be a doctor with a forged diploma from Harvard medical school and an impressive made up resume. He gets hired as the emergency room night administrator and makes sure to have Brenda on his staff. Although he has no medical knowledge or experience, Frank is able to influence the medical interns on his staff to step up and make medical calls on their own so he can deal with the administrative side of things without ever touching patients. Eventually, he wins over Brenda and the two fall in love. After finding out that her parents have disowned her when she had an abortion in the past, Frank attempts to help her reconcile with her family by proposing to Brenda.Meanwhile, Carl visits Frank's father who openly refuses to give up his son. However, Carl finds a letter from Frank with his address in Atlanta. The address leads Carl and his team to Frank's home, but Frank is already gone to Louisiana to meet with Brenda's parents. Carl does notice Frank's Harvard diploma with Frank's new alias which takes him to the hospital which Frank has already quit.Frank and Brenda meet with her parents in Louisiana, where Frank not only claims to be a Lutheran like them, but also that he is a qualified lawyer as well as a doctor. Brenda's father, Roger (Martin Sheen), questions Frank about his feelings which leads Frank to openly admit that he is not a lawyer, a doctor or a co-pilot but Roger takes it as just a romantic speech and agrees to give away his daughter's hand. Frank also passes the Bar exam and joins Roger's law firm as an assistant prosecutor.As preparations for the wedding continue, Frank travels back to New York to visit his father and tell him about the engagement. Frank Sr, now a US Post Office employee and still struggling with the IRS, reveals to his son that his mother has married Jack Barnes and completely moved on, which devastates Frank. He also reveals that he got a visit from the FBI and knows what Frank is doing. Frank desperately asks his father to tell him to stop,but Frank Sr encourages him to keep going instead. Incensed that his father is unable to act like a father, Frank takes leave of Frank Sr.On Christmas Eve, Frank calls Carl at the FBI office, who has been expecting the call and has his team listening in on it. Frank says he is done and settling down and asks Carl to stop chasing him. Carl informs him that this is not possible, since Frank has stolen about $4 million at this point. Frank understands and hangs up, not realizing he made a mistake by telling Carl about the engagement. Carl, having found Frank's alias in Atlanta earlier, deduces that Frank had to keep the same name when he moved to Louisiana, because he is dating a girl who thinks it is his actual name (changing his name would bring about too many questions).After looking through wedding announcements, Carl and his men manage to track Frank down on the night of the engagement party, leading Frank to confess to Brenda who he really is, before escaping out a window, and asking her to meet him at the local airport a few days later. However, when she arrives as planned, Frank is devastated to see Brenda is being watched closely by a number of disguised FBI agents which Frank easily makes.When Frank doesn't appear, Carl has his men stake out the airport, certain that Frank will attempt to show him up somehow, and try to escape by plane instead of leaving town in a quieter way.Frank puts a new plan into effect, where he poses as a recruiting pilot from Pan Am airlines, visiting a local college to recruit stewardesses to travel to Europe. He holds auditions where he picks the hottest girls he can find and dresses them up in uniforms. He then goes to the airport where he walks amongst the crowd while using the girls as a wall of "eye candy", completely distracting the agents from ever looking at him. Frank manages to walk right past Carl's men and escapes to Europe. He also uses a decoy in the unloading zone just to mess with Carl further.Seven months later, in 1967, Carl advises his boss that Frank has been forging checks all over the Eastern Hemisphere. Only this time, the checks are the real thing. Claiming that Frank is completely out of control, he requests permission to track him down in Europe. His boss however, denies him permission, citing that if Carl couldn't catch Frank while he was within the USA, he won't catch him in Europe.Carl refuses to give up and takes one of Frank's bogus checks to professional printers who deduce, from the quality of the check, that it must have been printed on a specific kind of printer that is only available in a handful of European countries, one of which is France. Remembering from an interview with Frank's mother that she was born in France, Carl travels to her birthplace of Montrichard and finds Frank, on Christmas Eve, inside a massive printing factory, printing thousands upon thousands of checks.Carl tells Frank that he came with the French police and promised them to arrest him himself. Frank assumes Carl is lying but Carl convinces him that he will be shot if he walks out of the factory without Carl. Frank agrees to handcuff 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, while Carl promises to have Frank extradited back to the USA.After two years, Frank is released into Carl's custody (as was seen in the opening of the film), and on Christmas Eve 1969, the plane extraditing Frank flies into the United States.As they prepare to land, Carl informs Frank (who has been requesting several times to call his father) that Frank Sr died accidentally the previous year. Devastated, Frank locks himself in the plane's bathroom and escapes from the plane to track down where his mother lives.His escape leads them the Barnes residence where Frank finds his mother, happily married to her second husband, who now has a young daughter whom Frank realizes is his half-sister.With his father dead and realizing his mother has moved on, Frank quietly surrenders as Carl and the local police arrive, and arrest him (before his Mom and her new family can realize who he is).Frank is finally tried, convicted, and sentenced to 12 years, completely isolated, in a maximum security Federal prison of Atlanta. During the next four years, Frank receives regular visits from Carl, especially around Christmas time. During one of these visits, Frank easily identifies a forger Carl is chasing after simply by glancing at a check that Carl casually shows him, giving the FBI agent an idea.Some times later, Carl visits Frank again, only this time, with his boss. They give him a check which he aptly identifies as fake as soon as he touches it, which makes Carl smile.In 1974, Carl 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. Although Frank is out of prison, he is chained to his desk job and misses the thrill of his old life. When he stumbles upon a pilot uniform, Frank gets tempted into posing as an airline pilot once again. Just as he's about to fly away, Carl meets him at the airport. Carl allows him to go free, predicting that Frank will return to work on Monday since there is no one chasing him anymore.Back in the office on Monday morning, Carl is nervous when Frank doesn't show up for work on time. However, Frank does show up, and the two begin going over a recently discovered check forgery that shows some new methods of forgery they haven't encountered before. As they look over the check, Carl asks Frank something that has been on his mind for years: how he cheated on the Louisiana Bar Exam, to become a lawyer. Frank claims he didn't cheat, and that he studied for two weeks and passed the exam on his own merits. Carl inquires to know if this is the truth, but Frank prefers to focus on the case at hand and presses on.It is then revealed,through scrolling text, that "Frank has been happily married for 26 years" had three sons, lives in the Midwest with his family, is still good friends with Carl, caught some of the world's most elusive money forgers and gets millions of dollars each year because of his work creating unforgeable checks.

Published Time: 2015-11-01 05:21:14