Review: Dick Tracy

Warren Beatty is the title heroic comic book detective attempting to bring down criminal Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) and his grotesque rogues’ gallery of henchmen. Madonna is nightclub singer Breathless, the film’s idea of a femme fatale, and gangster’s moll. Glenne Headly is well-cast as the more pure Tess Trueheart, sick of Tracy overlooking her or standing her up, or playing babysitter to Tracy’s new buddy Kid (the unremarkable Charlie Korsmo). Heavily made-up William Forsythe plays the most prominent goon, Flattop, whilst James Caan is a rival gangster in a curious throwaway role. Dustin Hoffman has a showy role as an incomprehensible goon called Mumbles, whilst other performers include veteran character actor R.G. Armstrong as Pruneface (sporting one of the better makeup jobs, along with Forsythe), Paul Sorvino as dethroned top gangster Lips Manlis, Mandy Patinkin is Breathless’ piano player 88 Keys, Dick Van Dyke is DA Fletcher, Charles Durning is the police Chief, Seymour Cassel is Tracy’s partner Sam Catchem, James Tolkan (looking shockingly like Variety’s Peter Bart) is Big Boy crony Numbers, and for B-movie fans, you also get Michael J. Pollard (who is still best known for being in the A-grade “Bonnie and Clyde” before descending into schlock), Mary Woronov and Henry Silva in small parts.

Sitting extremely uncomfortably like an ugly step-child in-between Tim Burton’s Gothic comic book nightmare “Batman” and the more recent, damn-near exact replication of Frank Miller’s graphic novel Robert Rodriguez’s “Sin City”, this ghastly 1990 Warren Beatty (producer-director-star) vanity project is a true mess. The performances are mostly atrocious; Beatty is stone-faced playing an admittedly one-dimensional character- sorry comic book geeks!, Pacino is monumentally embarrassing in a shamefully Oscar-nominated role (what were the voters all smoking back in 1990?), meanwhile Hoffman’s mannered extended cameo is among the worst things he has ever done (I’ve had a hard time forgiving him for it ever since, actually), and Madonna is bland at best.

The cruddy makeup and production design is horribly, horridly garish (the colour scheme here is seemingly the idea of a hyper 5 year-old with a million dollars’ worth of Crayolas, and yet it won an Oscar for art direction and makeup! How does that happen?), and the entire thing is so fucking unbelievably, insufferably dull. There’s no fun to be had here, folks, outside of nice work by Forsythe, Headly, Cassel, Durning, and Pollard. And what a waste of James Freakin’ Caan! Sonny Corleone! WTF?

Too many characters, too many Sondheim songs (one of which won an Oscar. Who cares which one…), too much shouting from Pacino (a pet hate of mine), too much ‘Look at me, Ma! I’m acting!’ from Hoffman, and way too much squinty-eyed, robotic Warren Beatty (never the most expressive of actors). An unqualified, incredibly noisy mess (the first film to use digital sound, I’d have hated it even more in the cinemas, as I’ve always hated digital sound, especially early on in its inception) that somehow won many critics over. They were clearly smoking the same stuff the Academy got a hold of. Scripted by Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. (the ‘master’ scribes behind such critically acclaimed artworks as “Legal Eagles” and “Top Gun”), from the characters created by Chester Gould. The score by Danny Elfman (“Edward Scissorhands”, “Darkman”, “Batman Returns”) is virtually a lesser imitation of his own work on “Batman” (And perhaps Pacino was aiming for Nicholson’s scenery-devouring Joker, but he came off more like Van Johnson’s godawful Minstrel on TV’s “Batman”). Oh, and anyone even remotely surprised by the final reveal of mysterious villain The Blank, is a moron. Sorry, but it’s true. I hated this.

Rating: D+