Dick Tracy

A bit too mellow yellow.

Dick Tracy is directed by Warren Beatty and written by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. Based on Chester Goulds comic strip creation of the same name, it stars Beatty, Al Pacino, Madonna, Glenne Headly, Dustin Hoffman, Charlie Korsmo, Charles Durning and William Forsythe. Music is by Danny Elfman, with songs by Stephen Sondheim, and cinematography is by Vittorio Storaro.

Punk Rock band X-Ray Spex once sang about The Day The World Turned Day-Glo, Warren Beattys Dick Tracy was exactly that. The live action cartoon is a feast for the eyes, as the city backdrop for this cops and gangsters tale is a fountain of bright, lurid primary colours. The characters are drawn brilliantly, where the good guys are very much human, b...

I'm heartily disappointed that this didn't produce sequels. If any fine actor/director of the period was perfect for the role of Dick Tracy, it was Beatty. He does very good work here. It's as if he took Tim Burton's template for 'Batman' and simply adjusted it for his comic-book picture. Madonna isn't bad here either, simply because she's pretending to be Marilyn Monroe, something she'd been wanting to do all of her career to that point. And the rogues gallery here is perhaps second in quality only to the aforementioned DC Caped Crusader. In retrospect, that perhaps was the picture's weakest link--no true criminal really dominated proceedings and stuck in one's mind. Had they tried the time-tested hookup of two baddies to get in Dick's hai...

Debonair and brightly clad detective Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) is out to stop an all out war breaking out in the city after mobster Big Boy (Al Pacino) slays Lips (Paul Sorvino) with a view to running the whole show. Part of that cunning plan is to unite all the criminal fraternities and get rid of this pesky cop. Meantime, Tracy alights on the permanently hungry Kid (Charlie Korsmo) whom he has to look after as well as his girlfriend Tess (Glenne Headly) as the bullets fly and things become seriously perilous for all three of them. Hes also got to figure out just what angle nightclub chanteuse Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) has in all of this - and is she at all to be trusted? Oh, and theres also the malevolent Blank to deal with too. In ma...

"Dick Tracy" is an incredibly well paced film and Warren Beatty has done a terrific job in the difficult task of taking an extraordinarily popular comic strip and endeavouring to bring it to life on the screen. He achieves this by having some of the backgrounds (and indeed the city skyline itself) drawn in the comic book style and he also makes the task aesthetically pleasing by using a wonderfully striking and beautifully vivid colour scheme. The film is considerably helped by the splendid make-up effects - they are of an impeccable calibre which really brings the gallery of eccentric comic book characters to life in a sometimes amusing way - and by the superb musical score with Madonna singing a selection of engaging songs and composer Da...