Okay, I have not seen "Gangs of New York" (and I generally don't care for films made by Martin Scorcese at all)...but...

I have seen "Catch Me If You Can" and it's a very good movie, a really intriguing story, with superb acting by both DiCaprio and Christopher Walken (who is amazing as DiCaprio's aging father). It's surely the exonneration of Leo DiCaprio. I had not thought of him as a serious actor until seeing this film.

The guy who plays the FBI agent is also very good, by the way, sort of nerdy but at the same time determined and efficient in that old FBI style of yesteryear.

This movie's got absolutely everything a good story needs. And the really interesting part is the unspoken message of the whole story, which for me is this:

Take a society that is so sick that it basically values only one thing...money...and has absolutely no pity on those who have none, take a broken family...broken indirectly by that society's very inhuman nature...take a young kid who is desperately trying to recover the dream of that family and find a place for himself, and who is smart enough to beat the corrupt system at its own game...and what have you got?

A hero, that's what. The honest and dedicated FBI guys who finally track that kid down don't know it in the least, but they are working for the gigantic insane Monster that has them and everybody else enslaved and doesn't give a damn how many lives it destroys on the way to the bank.

And that's something to think about. It was quite saddening to me to see the kid end up finally working for the Monster, but he didn't really have a whole lot of choice, did he? He was just a kid, after all. Great movie.

- LH