AFTER the big themes and occasionally ponderous science friction of AI: Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report, Steven Spielberg returns to safer ground with a slick mainstream flick straight out of the top drawer.

Catch Me If You Can recounts the incredible, real-life tale of one Frank Abagnale Jr who, at the age of 16 embarked on an audacious career as a conman, managing to scam around $2.5m in forged cheques while variously impersonating an airline pilot, a lawyer and a doctor. By the time the FBI finally caught up with him, in 1969, he wasn't yet 21.

It's a delicately layered paean to innocent 60s hedonism, as well as a fun-filled tribute to a lovably roguish robber. But for all its Italian Job/Robin Hood sparkle, Spielberg roots the story in possibly his best ever dissection of parent-child dynamics. It's a smart, sophisticated move that moves Catch Me If You Can way beyond the level of entertaining fluff that many might have expected.

Completely traumatised by his parents' divorce, Frank Jr (Leonardo DiCaprio) sets out with a vague, instinctive plan to accumulate enough cash to get the government off his dad's back. One thing leads to another and before you know it Frank has a list of aliases, a thorough knowledge of America's financial infrastructure, an unconsummated marriage and the FBI's finest fraud investigators chasing him all over the world.

Considering its two-and-a-half hour running time, Catch Me If You Can rattles along at a fair old lick as Spielberg speeds through the action set-ups with a finesse only matched in recent times by Steven Soderbergh's work on Ocean's 11. But the pace is cleverly countered by the evolution of Frank's relationship with his father, Frank Sr (Christopher Walken) who in spite of his manifest failure in business manages to maintain enough dignity to remain on his paternal pedestal in the eyes of his son.

But young Frank is never quite comfortable with his dad's tacit approval and a bizarre, almost fatherly friendship also develops between Frank and dogged FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks). And there's still time for one more twist in the domestic yarn as Frank's untarnished view of his mother (Nathalie Baye) is upended in the closing moments.

At the film's core though are three invigorating performances. While DiCaprio appears to ooze puppy dog enthusiasm for the high life he keeps enough back to explore the inner torments of a son who never saw the cracks in his familial idyll.

Nobody does Ordinary Joe quite like Tom Hanks and he turns in a wonderfully subtle adaptation of the Everyman. Meanwhile, Christopher Walken manages to elicit sympathy with menaces as Frank Sr's broken dream romanticism is afforded a touching humanity.

With the slow burns adding extra sparkle to its more incendiary moments, Catch Me If You Can is that rare thing - a mainstream movie with real heart.