Cory Massimino

Review: Dick Tracy (1990)

September 13, 2020 by Cory

★★★★½

Bringing a comic book to life is challenging. Characters, settings, and stories initially designed for the comic book medium are sometimes difficult to translate to the cinematic medium, resulting in failed adaptations. Dick Tracy is no such failure. In rejecting the almost-director’s strategy to update the original Dick Tracy comic books to be more realistic and violent, Warren Beatty avoided succumbing to the all-too-common modern tendency of being gritty for the sake of grittiness. Instead, Beatty created a hyper-stylized homage in the form of a straightforward comic book noir for kids.

It’s evidently clear from the very first frame — the title font really — that Beatty approached the source material with genuine fondness and integrity, rather than embarrassment. The creators behind Dick Tracy were so dedicated to doing justice to the comic book source material, they arguably did it better than any other comic book adaptation. It’s a triumph of stylized storytelling and an astounding achievement in realizing a vast fictional world far different from our own.

Comic books of the era in which Dick Tracy first appeared (and when his stories take place) were often characterized by: forthright moral archetypes, pulpy action-adventure, sappy melodrama, physical appearances that (often grotesquely) mirrored characters’ inner selves, colorful and surreal costuming/landscapes, static characters that return to their established moralities and attitudes by story’s end, and a heroic tone that avoids taking itself too seriously. On each of these counts, Dick Tracy passes with flying colors.

The creators of Dick Tracy accomplished this using winsome performances and writing, whirling montages, extravagant musical numbers, noir-but-still-heroic music (it could only be Elfman), wonderfully distinct and restricted colors, and uniquely dazzling make-up, costuming, and overall production design. Dick Tracy translates the major characteristics of Depression-Era comic books to the big screen with an endless supply of flair and heart. It should be viewed as a model by all others seeking to transform comic books into movies.

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