DICK TRACY
With Warren Beatty, Charlie Korsmo, Glenne Headly, Madonna, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, William Forsythe, and Charles Durning.
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Up to a point, it’s rather intriguing that Dick Tracy’s settings seem so deliberately unreal; what’s less intriguing is that they barely seem thought through–or thought about–at all. Once you acknowledge that the look of the comic strip has been caught, you begin to wonder why it has been caught. What is it saying about the late 30s or early 40s (when the action appears to be set) or the late 80s and early 90s–insofar as it’s saying anything at all? The answer appears to be: as little as possible. In other words, Dick Tracy is by design an artfully constructed nullity, attractive and charming in many spots but pretty close to empty.
By and large, with a few notable exceptions, Warren Beatty has shown an unusual talent for playing by the rules of mainstream Hollywood while somehow conveying the impression that he’s a radical innovator. It’s a duplicity that has worked wonders with some films, those directed and mostly written by others, such as Lilith, Bonnie and Clyde, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Shampoo, and Ishtar, but in the cases of his two previous directorial forays–Heaven Can Wait (which he codirected with Buck Henry) and Reds–the results are a good bit more ambiguous.
It’s important to bear in mind that Tracy’s importance in the strip was mainly graphic, a series of straight lines and sharp angles that contrasted with the roundness of the other characters. This contrast had a symbolic importance vis-a-vis Tracy’s incorruptibility, but Beatty’s features convey no such impression, so the difference is lost in the movie. What’s retained is the sense that the law is suave and attractive while criminals are hideously ugly, although even here there are no other particularly suave or attractive people working at the police station. (Maybe that’s why Tess and Breathless are both so smitten; Dick’s the only hunk in sight.)
A personal story–Tracy caught between libido and love, romance and duty, work and family, parenthood and freedom–is at the center of the film, along with a style that seems designed to suggest the innocence and simplicity of Beatty’s view of the world as a child. But this doesn’t match up very well with the mechanically crosscut chunks of movie that are supposed to fulfill expectations of Tracy as a crimebuster, or with the various action sequences, which Beatty never treats more than cursorily; even a big plot surprise in the penultimate scene comes across as going through the motions.
