Catch Me if You Can is not only one of the most grown-up movies Spielberg has made: at long last, it is the work of a filmmaker who is actually enjoying himself.  We haven't seen this from Spielberg for a while. His shift to making "important" films in the mid 1980s (starting with The Color Purple) seemed to leach the life out of him. The serious films he made strove for greatness, but all too often achieved only pomposity. Meanwhile, his lowbrow entertainments... well, they were just that: lowbrow entertainment. More skilful than those of other Hollywood directors, but just as soulless.  This from the man who had made films like Duel and Jaws and Close Encounters and ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark - films that reminded you that genre films could indeed be masterpieces.

There were signs of a return to form in his challenging AI and the artfully done Minority Report. But it's Catch Me if You Can that really sees Spielberg managing complex, nuanced material and sustaining the effort for the full film. Based on a true story, the film tells the story of Frank Abagnale Jr (Leonardo di Caprio), a teenager who conned his way into a serious of highly qualified jobs in the 1960s, and the federal agent who pursued him (Tom Hanks). A lot of this is pretty light-hearted, turning on the audience's enjoyment of Abagnale's chutzpah in bluffing those he does, and fascination with how he managed it. Yet there is always the sneaking sense that everything is about to slide out of control: not only is Abagnale's life as a fugitive inherently unstable, but his father (Christopher Walken) is on a downward spiral from which Abagnale seems to be trying to escape.

Spielberg balances these different elements expertly, bringing to mind his similarly deft handling of the lark-turned-serious in his debut feature The Sugarland Express. His handling of actors - a strength of Spielberg's that is often overlooked because of the kind of material he chooses to direct - is as good as always. Walken, in particular, is excellent as he takes a break from playing menacing psychotics. The scenes between Walken and di Caprio, as father and son, are the highlights of the film, and are the key to giving the film a depth beyond a caper comedy. Spielberg's regular cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, shows his versatility with a sun-bathed brightness that is perfect for the tone of the piece but light years from the grittiness he brought to Schindler's List. (Spielberg took years to settle on a favoured cinematographer - he rarely used any more than twice before 1993 - but has chosen well in Kaminski). And the score by John Williams is his best in ages: jazzy and Mancini-esque, it's a reminder of how good Williams can be at the top of his game, and a great rejoinder to those who think of Williams as a one-trick pony. (It's employment over animated opening titles drives home the resemblance to Mancini's work for Blake Edwards).

I thought the film was just about perfect, but the response from critics has been low key. Perhaps it's too slight a film to really excite them. Certainly Spielberg doesn't do anything to draw attention to himself here: his triumph is to get innumerable little things right. But Spielberg has nothing to prove on this count: he has shown he has more visual talent than pretty much anyone else working today. For too long, though, he was a director of bravura sequences who could rarely make a whole film come together satisfyingly. In Catch Me if You Can he gets it right at long last.

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