Dick Tracy

"I know how you feel, you don't know if you wanna hit me or kiss me - I get a lot of that"

Believe it or not, prior to the Golden age of Marvel films there was more than one way to make a comic book movie. Until the rise of computer-assisted filmmaking that made the depiction of superpowers easier to bring to life on the screen, the only real attempts at superhero films were Superman and Batman. Perhaps inspired by Tim Burton's success with Batman, would-be auteur Warren Beatty decided to bring early serial comic strip hero Dick Tracy to the big screen in a big way. Enlisting the talents of a huge all-star cast and building an almost expressionistic version of the 1930s that combines exaggerated comic book-inspired art direction with art deco kitsch, Beatty created an ambitious pastiche of 1930s culture, cliches, actors and characters.

Beatty dives headfirst into the Dick Tracy story, it's all action and theatrics as the square-jawed cop (played by Beatty himself) faces off with uber-gangster Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino). The plot isn't really all that special... it's less a reinvention or retelling of the Dick Tracy comics and more a recreation of an era and the pop culture that era produced. We get speakeasies, unrequited love, women spurned, frame-up jobs, zoot suits, and gangster takedowns... all the cliches get wheeled out as crucial, unironic parts of the plot and the film wallows in them like a showpig in golden mud.

At the heart of Dick Tracy (and I guess this doesn't just go for this film adaptation) there's the odd idea that gangsters are physically ugly (exemplified most by Big Boy Caprice), and that this ugliness is what drives them into crime as a kind of compensating factor. It alludes to Napoleonesque degrees of insecurity, and Pacino plays it to the bone in a grotesque hunchback suit as Caprice, like a comedy version of Tony Montana from Scarface. Some might call it a hammy performance but I think that Pacino naturally has such a great sense of humour, and that in Caprice he was finally given an opportunity to use that in a performance where he knew that people weren't going to take him seriously, and the result is just a great actor having a whole heap of fun.

Madonna tries to smoulder it up in a Dietrich/Garbo homage but I don't know if it really works in the way Beatty intends it to, a lot of the audience (both now and back in 1990) have certain associations they make with Madonna so she brings a lot of unneccessary baggage to the role. Glenne Headley plays the other love interest, the 'good girl' type to Madonna's bad girl, but she has all the screen presence of Woolworths checkout chick.

Beatty's direction is a pretty patchy affair too. Overall, the look of the film is very gaudy and bright in that early 1990s ways (see Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Batman, Super Mario Bros, etc)... obviously the intended effect is meant to be cartoonish (further supported by the use of silhouettes against these lurid backgrounds, and the use of modelwork for the cityscape), but I think it says more about the year the film was made than the year it's actually meant to be set in. The Kid (Charles Korsmo) is a purely 80s/90s Hollywood clichee; a way for the audience to connect to the bland and hardened hero. But when you're watching a film about a hero like Dick Tracy then you don't give a shit about a kiddie sidekick. The gangsters aren't all recreated as successfully as Beatty probably hoped either - the Cagneyesque Flat Top (William Forsythe) looks great but Little Face looks absolutely ridiculous. When I first saw this film as a kid I thought No Face was the coolest character, only to be let down by the revelation that it was someone in a mask. Maybe I've never forgiven the film completely for destroying my ten year-old fantasies, haha... nah, it was okay.

I did like the use of montage set to in-universe songs, like the raids and gunfights played out under a slow number, or the use of an upbeat swing tune whilst Big Boy Caprice's business booms. I think the film might've been better if they'd toned down the colour palette a little and retooled the script to feel less like Hollywood by-the-numbers. I think the biggest detracter for me is probably that I just don't get the appeal of Warren Beatty as an actor or a director. He's not a great performer (he always seems to have this weird squint going on), and his work as a director is more than workman-like.

DIRECTOR: Warren Beatty
WRITER/SOURCE: Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. Based on the comic strip by Chester Gould.
KEY ACTORS: Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Madonna, Glenne Headley, Charles Korsmo, William Forsythe, Ed O'Ross, Seymour Cassel, Charles Durning, Mandy Patinkin, Paul Sorvino, Dustin Hoffman, Kathy Bates, Dick Van Dyke, Colm Meaney, Catherine O'Hara, Henry Silva, James Caan, Estelle Parsons, Mike Mazurki, Michael J. Pollard

RELATED TEXTS:
- Dick Tracy, a serialised comic series that has been running since 1931.
- Adapted into the late 1930s film serials Dick Tracy, Dick Tracy Returns, Dick Tracy's G-Men and Dick Tracy Vs. Crime Inc.
- Four films were also made in the 1940s: Dick Tracy, Dick Tracy Vs. Cueball, Dick Tracy's Dilemma and Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome.
- There was also an animated TV series made in the 1960s, Dick Tracy, and a radio serial of the same name made in the 1930s.
- A sequel to Warren Beatty's film was planned but ongoing legal issues put a stop to any further Dick Tracy films or television series (including a modern Smallville-styled TV series). Two sequel novels were written by Max Allan Collins, Dick Tracy Goes to War and Dick Tracy Meets His Match.
- For more kitschy adaptations of comics properties (or films in that tradition), see The Spirit, The Shadow, Sin City, The Phantom, The Adventures of Pluto Nash and The Rockateer.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - won Best Song (Sooner or Later), Best Makeup and Best Art Direction. Also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Al Pacino), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design and Best Sound.
BAFTAs - won Best Makeup Artist and Best Production Design. Also nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Al Pacino), Best Special Effects, Best Costume Design, Best Editing and Best Sound.
Golden Globes - nominated for Best Film (Comedy/Musical), Best Supporting Actor (Al Pacino), Best Song (Sooner of Later) and Best Song (What Can You Lose)