Post by ronnierocketago on Mar 1, 2010 9:32:48 GMT
DICK TRACY (1990) - **1/2
DICK TRACY was and still remains a grand technical triumph of visual aesthetic cinema. I suppose a SIN CITY of it's time in the way filmmakers are goddamn obsessive to a nerdy degree about emulating the artistic economy of a comic book. Which If you ask me this sort of thing always comes off as sorta silly because cartoonists could just whip up anything through a dime lead pencil, cheap paint, and ink pens while these guys have crew of hundreds, millions of dollars, top flight FX, etc. And the books will always be more expressively friendly to the imagination. Sorry but it's true.
That said in movies like this and SIN CITY and Walter Hill's STREETS OF FIRE, I still admire that sort of ludicrous charming ambition. Except TRACY is more impressive than SIN CITY because like STREETS OF FIRE, this was all painstakingly done pre-CGI. And I think it's aged better as a result for the eyes.
With TRACY, director Warren Beatty purposely limited the production palette to the seven primary colors found in the TRACY comic strip. He intentionally framed (or tried at least) most of the narrative in quite a many shot and set-ups like a panel. I wouldn't be surprised if DICK TRACY plays better on Mute. All characters, even the most fantastically grotesque, are replicated with impressive make-up. I even apprecate Beatty finding inspiration from the stylistic violence found in 1930s Warner Bros. gangster movies. DICK TRACY scored a buttload of deserving technical Oscar nominations, and deservedly winning for Art Direction and Make-up. TRACY reportedly cost $47 million, a fortune at the time and TRACY to its credit does look expensive.
Hell they even spared a nickel for a rubbish script.
DICK TRACY really reminds me for better or worse Tim Burton's first BATMAN picture, both having everything going for them. Decent director, terrific filmatics, bigass budget, good cast, kickass Danny Elfman instrumental soundtrack, awkward but popular contributions by musical stars (Prince and Stephen Sondheim), and an insanely memorable pre-release marketing merchandise campaign. Hell I think my generation as kids might vividly remember the crazy buildup, the cultural atmosphere before they came out. They weren't summer blockbusters, they were events. I think at that age I enjoyed the TRACY action figures more than I did the movie. Plus a 5 year old could get away with saying "Dick" alot.
And both films suffer from a non-compelling, uneventual thin boring story that disservices everybody. I know I bitched at AVATAR for, to quote myself: "There is no story, but an outline. There are no characters or people, but archetypes."[/i] I hate to admit this, but at least AVATAR there was some sort of ummph behind it for you to maybe get engaged by on a basic human level. A natural underdog narrative, fighting off the superior foreign invaders, whatever. I never really get that from DICK TRACY.
The original comic strip debuted in 1931 during the Great Depression, when the societal villains white color and criminal seem to not just go unpunished. They seem to grow richer and more powerful at the expense of everybody else. Kinda like now. Audiences were hungry for a no-nonsense badass to clean up the mess, usually by punching. Remember this was the same decade which also gave us other wonderful ubermensch like Superman and Batman. Hell Batman is a Dick Tracy ripoff from the gadgets to a colorful rogues gallery. Except unlike those costume goofballs, Dick Tracy had a novel idea: when he killed good his archenemies (popular or not), they stayed fucking dead. If you pitched this to Marvel and D.C. today, those editors would throw themselves out the window.
But the TRACY movie, I'm never given the impression of why exactly Warren Beatty here is the top gangbuster, the most hated and feared policeman in the criminal underworld. Unless yellow scares them shitless. As good of an actor Beatty is (or can be at least), he just lacks lacks the necessary larger than life, action speaks louder than words presence needed to make this sort of bare knuckles fun pulp storytelling execute. Let's put it another way: Remember that legendary bank robbery scene in DIRTY HARRY? Clint Eastwood, hot dog in hand and calmly under pressure he (and Mr. .44 Magnum Revolver) dishes out justice. You quickly learn that for rest of the movie (and four sequels), he's the top badge around. Fuck with him at your own risk.
Everything else about Beatty here really doesn't work. His "bonding" shit with the kid does nothing for me, nor his fustrated romantic relationship, neither which are cute or charming or funny. Maybe if Eastwood had done it, he could have pulled it off. Funny enough Eastwood was supposed to play Tracy when this was originally in development back in the early 1980s. Man he so could have made a stupid goofy yellow wardrobe seem absolutely manly.
I think Beatty is good though with the genre obligated unfulfilled sexual heat with then-girlfriend Madonna as the doomed femme fatale, this Madonna version back when she loved showing off her bare chest, slightly before her lesbian phase followed much later by her getting crucified for fun and that laughable faux-British accent. I was going to completely destroy her here because breaking news: she can't act. Shit she can't even do sexy good. But I don't want to anger and piss off the AwardsDaily forums regulars too much, so I'll spare her my usual ranting rage this one time. I still hold to my theory that whenever she hooks up with movie people (actors or directors), they all suffer creatively before they get wise and dump her. Afterwards Sean Penn won Oscars, Guy Ritchie made SHERLOCK HOLMES, and Beatty got married.
Still there are some good things in TRACY. Al Pacino, like every other performance he's given in the last 25 years coarsely screams intensely alot here but since this is a cartoon, it's oddly appropriately here. I laughed at haggard hunchback Pacino lecturing Madonna how to dance. Dustin Hoffman's cameo was great. Most of Sondheim's penned songs are good (one of them won him an Oscar), even if I threw my hands up after the fourth or so time of Madonna belting out Sondheim to a montage. Enough already. Beatty well-crafts that whole climax at the bridge tower with the giant sprockets of doom.
But I dunno, DICK TRACY is one of those movies that should work. But it doesn't really. Better as an idea than it does as a movie. The story never picks up steam until a shadowy figure plays a Machiavellian game, playing everybody against each other for some nefarious ulterior motive. But by the time TRACY quits self-admiring itself and actually gets interesting, too late for me. Or for that matter, I grinned at that early moment of a gangster writing a message to Tracy on the wall using his Tommy Gun. That was fun.
You know, briefly made me care. I wanted more of that.