"They kill someone in the first five minuets!" excalimed my friend Peter's mom. It was the summer of 1990, I had just graduated from kindergarten, and I was trying to convince my parentsto take me to see Dick Tracy, the new blockbuster. The previous year, a bunch of selfless neighboorhood parents had sat through Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a movie that definatley did not have the style or appeal of Tracy. What Tracey does have is sex and violence, and a lot of it. Peter's mom was right- despite the fact it got an "R" rating, the film was heavily marketed to kids, who had no business seeing it. When I finally saw the movie on video a few years later, I shut it off in a cold sweat, after viewing one of the most sadistc acts of violence in movie history. I had nightmares about it that scene for years, and watching it as an adult (I guess) it still is pretty creepy.
This may be an odd way to begin a movie review, but if a movie has that strong an effect on your psyche as a kid, it's bound to cross over on your understanding of the film as an adult. But even with all that aside, I can still acknowege that Dick Tracy is one of the best action/adventure films from that period, and the least dated. Beacuse the movie is designed to look fake, we don't worry about the visual effects, and because it is in the 30's, we there is none of the late 80's/early 90's pop culture referances in movies like Batman.
The movie was in development for years before Beatty became attached as actor and director, but I doubt anyone else could have done this better (Martin Scorsese and Bob Fosse were both slated to direct, and Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro were the first choices to play the detective). Beatty was a hardcore fan of the comic strip, so he brought a level of respect to the materail, avoiding the urge to play it for camp. At the same time he preserves the astheque of a comic strip. Each character has essentially one trait, and that's it, right down to the their names. In the comic strip format, where the story only inches forward each day, obvious characterzations are important due to econemy of storytelling, but this would normally be the death of anything beyond a kid's film. But Beatty tackes this heads on and has fun with it-since we know exactly how every character will act at all times, the whole movie is about style, noirish dialouge and stagecraft. For example, Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) is exactly you would expect a person named Breathless Mahoney to be. And the movie has a cavalcade of stars- Al Pacino, Glynne Hedly, Dustin Hoffman, James Caan, Charles Durning, Dick Van Dyke, Paul Sorvino, Mandy Patinkin, Kathy Bates, Estelle Parsons, and on and on.
The film looks brillant-literally. There are only eight colors used by the great photographer Vittirio Storaro, to give the movie the look of a comic strip. The choice to give most characters grotesque make-up also works, as the movie is, to use the cliche, a visual feast.
Some critics disliked the film as all style and no substance, but this missed the point- the style is the substance. The movie is all about lighting, costumes, makeup, production design, editing, and character types. If you go into a movie like this expecting some kind of deep statement about humanity, you are really barking of the wrong alley. This movie is almost as much fun to watch as it would be to have those wrist radios in real life.
Dick Tracy (1990)