: As Frank Junior (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes on the lam impersonating a pilot, lawyer and doctor, he scams millions of dollars in check forgeries, all in a misguided attempt to get his mother and father back together. The dad, Frank Senior (played by Walken), is a loveable failure who, in his own way, has been ripping off the government through various minor frauds. He never disguises how impressed he is with the kid who is the apple of his eye, or how much he loves him.
Early in the film, the son admires his dad as he dances with his beautiful wife (Nathalie Baye) and retells the story of how he met her in France in a room filled with his fellow Yankee soldiers, and how he knew then and there she would be his wife. By the end of the movie, the father is a broken man holding down a job with the U.S.
post office, and still proud of his son’s accomplishments, refusing to allow him to give himself in. “You can’t stop,” he tells DiCaprio, with the insistence of an older man who wants his son to win where he ultimately lost. Walken’s characters have usually been so confident, so in control, even when they’re going mad.
operates under the illusion of control, able to keep up appearances and a dazzling charm, but underneath that façade is a great loneliness and melancholy. When Frank takes his father out to dinner, the father once again tells the story of how he met his wife, getting his son to tell the story along with him, and he can’t hold back frightening tears. Knowing no father wants to be seen in that light, he changes the subject back to his son’s success, world traveling as a “pilot”.
Only an actor as spontaneous as Walken would be able to shift gears with such brio. “Where are you going tonight, Frank?” he beams.
“Someplace exotic?” Walken glances around the room conspiratorially and winks at young DiCaprio. He leans in and in his distinctive smiling whisper, he confides, “The rest of us really are suckers!
” : As Frank Junior (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes on the lam impersonating a pilot, lawyer and doctor, he scams millions of dollars in check forgeries, all in a misguided attempt to get his mother and father back together.
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