STEVEN Spielberg films are a bit like buses. Nothing for donkeys' years and then three come along at once.

Catch Me If You Can (12A) is the third in the director's quickfire treble, completed in less than 18 months, and significantly different in both style and content from the darker Minority Report and AI.

If it wasn't for the delays in the filming of Gangs of New York, which tied up Leonardo DiCaprio and forced director Gore Verbinski to delay and then abandon the project, Spielberg would not have directed this comedy adventure at all. On the evidence of the finished product, that would have been a tragedy.

DiCaprio plays Frank Abagnale, a 17-year-old who uses his good looks and smooth patter as potent weapons in the art of conning people. The film is based on Abagnale's autobiography. In the book, Abagnale recounts his incredible teenage years when he affected a number of disguises to swindle the US government out of thousands of dollars.

He would have got away with it too, were it not for the unrelenting efforts of one FBI agent to bring him to justice. Tom Hanks plays the agent, although it was supposed to be James Gandolfini in the role. The delay in filming meant he had to go back to playing Tony Soprano.

The film opens in 1963. DiCaprio is devastated when his mother cheats on his father, played by Christopher Walken. Determined to reunite his fractured family, DiCaprio runs away from home and adopts a variety of guises, airline pilot, doctor, international playboy, assistant attorney general, to extort millions in dud cheques, in the hope that he can woo his mother back by promising her a life of riches.

FBI agent Hanks is charged with locating the pretender and putting him behind bars, by any means necessary.

He quickly gains a healthy respect for the conman when he corners him in a motel room, only for DiCaprio to convince him he is a secret service agent. He gets away but Hanks devotes his career to tracking him down.

Catch Me If You Can is a wonderfully entertaining caper that shows a completely different side to Hanks, and plays to DiCaprio's natural charm. Spielberg keeps a brisk tempo, underscored by John Williams's funky, jazzy score, propelling the plot inexorably towards its fascinating conclusion.

The framework of the story allows Spielberg to develop a favourite theme, the relationship between father and son. He first looks at how DiCaprio and Walken fail to connect and then moves on to the bond between Hanks and DiCaprio.

It grows from hunter and prey to protector and victim as Hanks looks beyond the trickster's outward, and ultimately false, charm to find the frightened youth underneath. When DiCaprio is finally apprehended in a tiny French village, the FBI man hammers out a deal to ensure his early release in exchange for consultancy work for the US government.

At two hours 20 minutes it might be overlong but this is a fun, thrilling and touching adventure.