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Dick Tracy

Dick Tracy on DVD

Yet another Warren Beatty tour de force, Dick Tracy is a comic strip brought to life, in more ways than one.

It's a pretty good DVD, too, if all you want is the movie with no extra material included in the price.

But since it lacks even a theatrical trailer, a Special Edition it definitely ain't!

Producer, director and star Beatty chose to give Dick Tracy a bright comic book look and it looks very nifty, though it also encourages you not to suspend your disbelief. Still, the film looks and sounds very good, a comic book fantasy setting made complete with extensive use of mattes and other effects to create the "alternate world."

Beatty is joined by an all star cast, though most of them are virtually unrecognizable beneath their comic book character makeup. That cast includes Al Pacino as head bad guy Big Boy Caprice, Glenne Headly as Tracy's main squeeze Tess Trueheart, Madonna as Breathless Mahoney, William Forsythe as Flattop, Mandy Patinkin as 88 Keys, R.G. Armstrong as Pruneface, James Tolkan as Numbers, Dustin Hoffman as Mumbles, Dick Van Dyke as D.A. Fletcher, and Paul Sorvino as Lips Manlis. The makeup lets each of these journeyman actors (especially Pacino) chew the scenery at will, which while fun to watch isn't the greatest way to get us to suspend our disbelief either.

The makeup also gets in the way of our suspension of disbelief, though since it's inspired by the type of character who populate Chester Gould's cartoon it's understandable why Beatty chose to do it that way.

And the cast is very good, though we found ourselves spending time trying to figure out who was who from their voices rather than watching the movie.

It's easy to identify Madonna, however. Her Breathless Mahoney is all woman, and she plays it very well - and never as over the top as Pacino's performance was.

The story meanders excessively, but the movie is as much about the look as the plot. Danny Elfman's score is eerily reminiscent of what he did for Batman, and Steven Sondheim has added some terrific songs that add to the enjoyment.

Taken as a whole, Dick Tracy is a flawed movie that perhaps tried too hard - yet it's still entertaining.

The DVD, besides its Spartan features, is very good. It's presented in anamorphic widescreen (16x9 TV compatible) and the picture quality is terrific. The colors are what really make this film stand out, of course, and that also makes the movie perfect for DVD's high quality output when the studios bother to do a good job on the mastering - and fortunately Disney has done that here.

The audio is offered in Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1 surround and it not only sounds great (especially the music) it makes good use of all the channels.

As mentioned above, however, the disc falls down in the fact that it offers no extra material at all.

Dick Tracy, from Buena Vista Home Entertainment
105 min. anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1), 16x9 TV compatible, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS surround sound
Starring Warren Beatty and an all star cast
Written by Jim Cash & Jack Epps. Jr., Produced and Directed by Warren Beatty

 

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Updated May 13, 2006