Review of Dick Tracy (1990) by Angie Y — 23 Sep 2014

Having the terrible NES game be my only experience of Dick Tracy prior to watching this, this film is surprisingly accessible, beautifully crafted and all around is pretty great.

As soon as it starts the brimming colors and vibrant style really grab your attention. It is an absolutely beautiful film and wonders were done with its budget and from what I have seen is very faithful to the comics. The soundtrack is really great too, it really fits the film and is memorable.

One of the best aspects about the film though, is its script. It is very, very quick and witty, with quotable lines and great one liners thrown in there that really made me laugh quite a lot. That is also another thing, this film has a fantastic sense of humor that I was not expecting. Again, I have not read the comics so I don't know, but the film was really funny and had me laughing regularly.

As well as having a good script, visuals and music, the characters are brilliant and they are brought vividly to life by a distinguished cast of very talented people and has one of the best child performances I've seen in a long time. At first I was questioning the acting, it felt a bit off. As the film went on a little longer I got the impression it was supposed to 'comic booky', it isn't bad acting but it fits the style and makes sense for what it was supposed to do and all the characters are really memorable and likeable. Like Jack Nicholson in Batman, Al Pacino is the real scene stealer here, he's very funny and strangely likeable and even if he did want a pseudonym used for this film, it's very obviously him. And if you didn't know any better you'd have thought that Dustin Hoffman had just walked right off of the Rain Man set.

The only character I had a problem with was Breathless Mahoney and it's not because I thought Madonna did a bad job because I didn't, I thought she was good, like everyone else. But I found her character really pointless and with a few scenes rewritten could have been taken out completely but there's something that happens with her and makes it all fit together.

If I had to think of a negative I'd have liked to have seen Beatty have more make up applied to his face, while he pretty much looked the part anyway, he didn't really have much applied to his face at all. I don't know if an ego but seeing as how all the other actors went head over heels for their roles, especially Pacino who got very in-depth with his character's development, it is noticeable.

Dick Tracy is a very likeable, enjoyable and beautiful looking film. It's a very accessible film and it doesn't punish you for not knowing anything about the source material. It has a good story and good characters to make what's happening on screen all the more interesting. I enjoyed my time with it and was pleasantly surprised.