Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy is the bright, cheerful cousin to Tim Burton's Batman. When Tracy
was released the year after Burton's film, it felt something like an also-ran. (It didn't help that
Danny Elfman scored both pictures.) But now, after over two decades of tortured heroes in dark
films inspired by comics and graphic novels, Tracy's sunny retro look is positively refreshing.
The late Chester Gould, who created the character and drew the strip for years, was reportedly an
impediment during the film's long gestation period, but it was Gould's distinctive vision that
ultimately made Tracy unique. No one would ever mistake Tracy for a film based on a Marvel or
D.C. character.
Anyone who ever dealt with Gould (I met him briefly when I was very young) instantly
recognized that he was an eccentric of the first order, but he was also an individual of strongly
felt traditional values. The square-jawed Dick Tracy was Gould's ideal of the tough, righteous
cop who couldn't be bought, scared or thrown off the track, and who could always be relied upon in a
crisis. Tracy's foes were always distorted lunatics, because in Gould's imagination you could see
criminals for what they were: warped and dangerous. His cops didn't talk much, but his criminals
were full of chatter, much of it repetition of catchphrases. It was Gould's way of conveying that
they lived in their own world.
It seemed ironic at the time that Warren Beatty, who began his career playing rogues and
criminals (most famously, Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde), should end up portraying one of
fiction's most stalwart cops. But one glimpse of that famous mug under a yellow fedora was all it
took to convince Tracy fans that Beatty was their man. After numerous writers, many potential
directors and several casting changes (notably, the replacement of Sean Young by Glenne
Headly in the pivotal role of Tess Trueheart), Dick Tracy finally went before the cameras under
Beatty's notoriously persnickety eye, which drove everyone crazy. A tumultuous production left rumors in its wake of a two hour and fifteen minute
"director's cut" shortened at the behest of then-Disney president Jeffrey Katzenberg, but its existence has been consistently denied. Reliable reports
indicate that the current version, which runs one hour and forty-five minutes, is Beatty's cut.
Dick Tracy takes place in a lustrous metropolitan landscape where the police have been holding
their own against crime, but only barely. One gets the sense that, without Dick Tracy (Beatty),
the battle would be lost. This wouldn't be an entirely unwelcome result to Tracy's long-suffering
girlfriend, Tess Trueheart (Headly), who always gets abandoned when Tracy is summoned by a
call on his trademark two-way wrist radio. Let someone else look after the city for a while, thinks
Tess. Her man can take a desk job. Tracy loves Tess, but the running joke is that the man who is
fearless when facing a hail of bullets becomes timid when staring into the eyes of the woman he
loves.
The film's plot is driven by the efforts of top hood Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) to seize control
of the city's rackets. As a first step, Big Boy has his enforcers, Flattop (William Forsythe) and
Itchy (Ed O'Ross), mow down the chief lieutenants of rival Lips Manlis (Paul Sorvino) at a card
game. Then it's Lips's turn to go, leaving Big Boy in possession of a new headquarters, the
swanky Club Ritz, and a new girlfriend, the Club's star attraction, Breathless Mahoney
(Madonna), a hybrid of ingenue and femme fatale. "You don't know if you want to hit me or kiss
me", she tells Tracy. "I get a lot of that."
Tracy's private life is complicated by the The Kid (Charlie Korsmo), an orphan whom Tracy
chases down after the boy steals a watch, but then rescues from the cut-rate Fagin to whom The
Kid reports (Steve Epper). Tracy and Tess look after The Kid—Tess calls him "the eating
machine"—and Tracy keeps not sending him to the orphanage, even though "it's the law".
Meanwhile, The Kid keeps following Tracy on calls. He proves useful, too.
By using Big Boy's plan to take over the rackets as an excuse, the screenplay by Jim Cash and
Jack Epps, Jr. (with uncredited work by Bo Goldman) stuffs the plot with a dozen or more Gould
characters that Gould himself never brought together. Beatty's clout as a producer allowed him to
get an amazing cast, even though many familiar faces are hidden behind elaborate make-up and
costumes. Dustin Hoffman is almost unrecognizable as Mumbles (so named for obvious reasons),
as is Dick Van Dyke as D.A. Fletcher. Mandy Patinkin can be spotted as Breathless' piano man,
88 Keys, but he's never looked so homely (and in the world of Chester Gould, looking homely is
a bad sign). Blink and you may miss Beatty's old Bonnie and Clyde co-stars Estelle Parsons and
Michael J. Pollard as, respectively, Tess's mother and a cop named Bug Bailey. And see if you
can recognize the familiar voice of familiar bad guy R.G. Armstrong behind the elaborate
wrinkles of Pruneface.
The only hood who isn't hidden behind major makeup is James Caan's Spaldoni. In a scene rife
with subtext, Spaldoni challenges Big Boy at a conference of the city's bad guys. Again, this is
Gould's world, so that when the former Corleone Brothers clash, the one with the least distorted
features behaves more honorably. Of course, in gangland, honorable behavior is not rewarded.
All of this plays out in a world designed to look like a comic strip, but a Chester Gould comic
strip. Richard Sylbert won an Oscar for his inventive production design that relies on vast
expanses of the basic colors that Gould used in his panels: red, blue, yellow, orange, green and
purple. Costume designer Milena Canonero created a variety of patterned but monochromatic
looks so that every crook in Tracy became his own variation of Jack Nicholson's Joker. (Indeed,
Nicholson's purple-clad prankster would have fit right in.)
Matching the colorful surroundings is the jazzy soundtrack with songs by, of all people, Stephen
Sondheim. In a varied and unpredictable career, Sondheim probably never expected to compose
songs for a major pop star. Madonna doesn't have the Broadway-trained diction for which
Sondheim usually writes, but she delivers his tricky lyrics with the enthusiasm of the nightclub
chanteuse she's playing, and they're the perfect accompaniment to the montages of crime and
law enforcement assembled by Beatty and his editor. The film doesn't set a definite time
period, but it feels like the Roaring Twenties, and even law enforcement is a blast. Just ask The
Kid.
In the hit-and-miss world of Disney catalog releases, Dick Tracy comes up a clear win, with a
1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presentation that beautifully reproduces the film's carefully
delineated palette as photographed by Beatty's Reds collaborator, Vittorio Storaro. Blacks are
solid and deep, detail is excellent (check out the facial make-up and the clothing detail), and
colors are fully saturated without bleeding. Film grain is visible and natural, without evidence of
high frequency filtering or artificial sharpening.
High-def enthusiasts may be struck by an apparent lack of depth to the image, but be assured that
it's by design. The film has always looked two-dimensional, consistent with the effort to recreate
the look and feel of Gould's comic strip. Dick Tracy's appearance on Blu-ray accurately recreates
that look, which is aided by the flatness of the obvious matte work. Yes, you can spot that it's
drawn. It's supposed to look that way.
Dick Tracy was famously the first film recorded all digitally, and it was released in both a 70mm
blow-up with six-track sound and the short-lived "CDS" digital format. This mix is presumably
the source for the Blu-ray's DTS-HD MA 5.1 track, which sounds terrific. There is major activity
in all channels for big scenes like a long buildup to a boiler explosion (good guys in jeopardy!
steam erupting left and right!) and a massive shootout between the police and the crime gang
(roaring tommyguns!). Discrete rear channel effects appear throughout the film, such as a cat that
makes the mistake of interrupting the card game in the opening sequence, and a distant roar of
thunder that begins in the rear channel, then progresses to the front. On both sound effects and
the jazzy band performances at the Club Ritz, the bass extension is deep and tight, and the clarity
at the high end is sharp without being fatiguing. Both dialogue and sung vocals are clear (except
for certain spoken sections that are meant to be otherwise). Danny Elfman's score sounds terrific,
and it's a tribute to Elfman that his work blends seamlessly with Sondheim's.
Disney has included its usual introductory trailers and "Sneak Peaks", which in this case include
Oz: The Great and Powerful, Castle: Season 4 on DVD, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? on Blu-ray,
ABC TV on Blu-ray, Mary Poppins on Broadway and an anti-smoking PSA.
Otherwise the disc has no extras—and that's a shame. Dick Tracy was a massive production
involving numerous participants in front of and behind the camera. Doesn't someone want to
capture their recollections while it's still possible to do so? Even if the answer is no, some
materials already exist, because I remember seeing at least one EPK at the time of the film's
release. Someone could have checked the archives.
Al Pacino's portrayal of Big Boy Caprice has often been criticized as "over the top" and "scenery
chewing". These criticisms started when Dick Tracy was first in theaters, and they've never
disappeared. (Indeed, they seem to pop up whenever Pacino's name is mentioned, regardless of
the specifics of the actual performance.) I sometimes wonder whether viewers complaining about
Pacino in Dick Tracy have watched the rest of the movie. Every crook with major make-up is
performing at the same level; Pacino just has more screen time. Look at Forsythe's Flattop,
who's generally spared the need to deliver lines; or Armstrong's Pruneface, with his threats to
"rub Tracy out"; or Sorvino's Lips Manlis for the brief time he survives. For that matter, look at
Hoffman's Mumbles—the only reason he isn't chewing the scenery is because he never opens his
mouth wide enough. (He's still talking the whole time.)
Pacino's performance is perfectly pitched for Dick Tracy, and he demonstrated his power as an
actor by holding his own against an army of well-seasoned hams. Despite the lack of extras,
highly recommended.
For the week of December 4th, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is bringing The Bourne Legacy to Blu-ray. This picture, the fourth installment in the Bourne franchise, works as a "sidequel." Much of the film runs parallel with The Bourne Ultimatum, and Gilroy ...
Disney/Buena Vista is bringing the yellow-coated detective, Dick Tracy, to Blu-ray. Specs and special features have yet to be revealed. The comicstrip-noire classic starring Warren Beatty, Madonna and Al Pacino, shoots to its Blu-ray debut December 11th.
According to our friends over at Aintitcool.com, Warren Beatty has confirmed that a Blu-ray for his Dick Tracy (1990) is in the works. A possible release date, however, has not been revealed. In 1991, Dick Tracy won three Oscar Awards, including Best Art Direction-Set ...
