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film review

Fly Colt Fly is a documentary about young Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. the Barefoot Bandit.

Somewhere below "Shoeless Joe" Jackson in the pantheon of footwear-averse American icons sits Colton Harris-Moore, a.k.a. "the Barefoot Bandit."

After escaping from a halfway house as a teenager, Harris-Moore led authorities on a three-year goose chase/minor-crime spree during which he stole dozens of vehicles ranging from bicycles to light aircraft; Adam and Andrew Gray's energetic documentary recounts its subject's story as a rollicking tall tale punctuated by animated interludes that honour the sheer comic-book outlandishness of his tactics.

As a junior-varsity version of Catch Me If You Can, Fly Colt Fly is enjoyable enough, but it's too in thrall to its namesake to take on any sort of genuinely critical perspective; the movie feints at examining the loneliness of its long-distance runner, but it keeps taking on the feeling of a victory lap.

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