Dick Tracy

Year: 1990
Directed By: Warren Beatty
Written By: James Cash & Jack Epps Jr.

RYAN’S REVIEW

I was six years old when this movie came out, and I watched it about a million times.  It’s a movie that inspired my love of action films as well as comic book themes. The color coordination really hooked me in as a six year old too.  Turns out the main colors of the film are yellow, orange, green, red, blue, and purple plus black and white. Which are the six colors the comic appeared in when originally published. Twenty-two years later and I still like what Warren Beatty did with this film and his use of the colors at hand.  This film is so bright it resembles a Tim Burton film, especially with Danny Elfman doing the score.  That’s a good thing though, I think this movie has a timeless quality that will help it live on forever, or until the inevitable reboot because studios are too stupid to come up with new ideas these days.

I like everything Warren Beatty did behind the camera as director of this movie.  Not just the color coordination but the style, the sets, the cars, the walkie-talkie watches, and the costumes are all top of the line. Beatty is also great in the role of the title character, he rocks the hell out of that yellow fedora. Al Pacino is always an excellent choice for the mob boss.  Under a lot of make-up he does a great job of playing Big Boy Caprice, based on the Chicago mob boss Al Capone. Pacino was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actor for the role but didn’t win.  Madonna plays her part well; she is really sexy and seductive as Breathless Mahoney.  She was one of the many women to jump start my sex drive at a very young age and it was this role that did it. At the age of six my parents thought I wasn’t old enough to see her doing anything else.  This film has a terrific supporting cast beyond those top three including Paul Sorvino, Dustin Hoffman, William Forsythe, Dick Van Dyke, James Caan,  and Kathy Bates.  There is also Charlie Korsmo in the role of The Kid, he was in a few movies I loved as a child in the early 90s then mainly disappeared.

This was the cops and robbers story I identified the most with as a child.  It had a strong hero who always knew what to do, a large variety of really animated bad guys, and a big time shoot out in the end. It offered scenes that my imagination was really able to run wild with and it helped aid in my young creative spirit. This is a film I would recommend to anybody and I have really enjoyed seeing it again. This movie is worth your time if you get the opportunity to see it.

AMBER’S REVIEW

This movie is beautiful. I feel like this movie is an animated film, that isn’t actually animated. The colors are completely vivid and pretty and the characters are made up in a way that doesn’t even seem possible for the time period that this movie was made. Madonna looks exquisite in this film. I remember watching this movie when I was younger and not really ever knowing exactly what was happening, but watching it now I still really like this movie. It has action and suspense and is made in such a whimsical way. I think that Warren Beatty is one of the only men in the world that could actually pull off wearing that classic yellow hat and jacket.

This film is well worth your time of you haven’t seen it. It has a little something for everyone and is a movie you should definitely see in your lifetime.

NEXT MOVIE: Die Hard (1988)