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| Name | Dick Tracy |
|---|---|
| Caption | Theatrical release poster |
| Director | Warren Beatty |
| Producer | Warren Beatty |
| Writer | Chester Gould Jim Cash Jack Epps, Jr. |
| Starring | Warren Beatty Al Pacino Madonna Glenne Headly William Forsythe Charles Durning Dustin Hoffman Charlie Korsmo James Tolkan |
| Music | Danny Elfman (score) Stephen Sondheim (songs) |
| Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro |
| Editing | Richard Marks |
| Studio | Touchstone Pictures Silver Screen Partners IV Mulholland Productions Bandai USA |
| Distributor | Touchstone Pictures |
| Released | |
| Runtime | 105 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $47 million |
| Gross | $162,738,726 |
Development of the film started in the early 1980s with Tom Mankiewicz assigned to write the script. The project also went through directors Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Walter Hill, and Richard Benjamin before the arrival of Beatty. Filming was entirely at Universal Studios. Danny Elfman was hired to compose the film score, and the music was featured on three separate soundtrack albums.
Dick Tracy was released in 1990 to mixed reviews, but was generally a success at the box office and at awards time. It picked up seven Academy Award nominations and won in three of the categories: Best Original Song, Best Makeup and Best Art Direction. A sequel was planned, but a controversy over the film rights ensued between Beatty and Tribune Media Services, and the lawsuit still goes on, so a second film has not been produced.
Meanwhile, Big Boy coerces club owner Lips Manlis (Paul Sorvino) into signing over the deed to Club Ritz. He then kills Lips by placing him in a cement-filled box and dropping it into the river while one of his men shoots an eavesdropping policeman. Big Boy also steals his girlfriend, the seductive and sultry singer Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) and takes her to spread the word that anyone who worked for Lips now works for him. After police find Lips' body, Tracy goes to arrest Big Boy for Lips' murder, but there is no useful physical evidence and Breathless is the only witness. Instead of providing testimony, she unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Tracy. Big Boy cannot be convicted and he is released from jail. Big Boy's next move is to try to bring other criminals Spud Spaldoni (James Caan), Pruneface (R. G. Armstrong), Influence (Henry Silva), Ribs Mocca (Robert Beecher), Mumbles (Dustin Hoffman), Texie Garcia (Catherine O'Hara), and Numbers (James Tolkan) together under his leadership while Dick Tracy overhears the meeting while staying out of view. Spaldoni refuses stating that he has his own business to run and meets an untimely demise that night when he falls victim to a car bomb upon leaving the meeting area. Having witnessed this meeting, Tracy tries again to get the testimony from Breathless he needs to put Big Boy away.
She agrees to testify only if Tracy agrees to give in to her advances. He resists, despite his growing attraction. Meanwhile, Big Boy has the detective kidnapped in order to try to bribe him, but the Kid, who has followed the detective and is watching, is deeply impressed when Tracy refuses to be corrupted and saves him when the gangsters attempt to kill him. To retaliate, Tracy leads a seemingly unsuccessful raid on Club Ritz, but one of his men plants a listening device with an operative named "Bug" Bailey (Michael J. Pollard) in the attic so the police can eavesdrop on Big Boy's criminal activities. The resultant raids all but wipe out Big Boy's criminal empire. Caprice discovers the microphone, sets up a trap to kill Tracy and the captured Bailey in a warehouse, but a figure with no face (known as "The Blank") steps out of the shadows to save them. Meanwhile, Breathless shows up at Tracy's apartment, once again in an attempt to seduce him. Tracy shows he is only human by allowing her to kiss him. Tess witnesses this and leaves town. She eventually has a change of heart. But before she can tell Tracy, she is kidnapped by The Blank. Tracy falls victim to another trap. He is drugged by The Blank and framed for the murder of corrupt District Attorney John Fletcher (Dick Van Dyke).
Big Boy is back in business, but he too is framed in this case for Tess' kidnapping. Sprung from jail by his colleagues on New Year's Eve, Tracy sets out to save his true love. He arrives at a shootout outside Big Boy's club where all of Big Boy's men are gunned down by the police. Abandoning his crew, Big Boy ties Tess to the mechanism of a drawbridge, but he is confronted by both the Blank and Tracy. Desperate to escape, he shoots the Blank. Enraged, Tracy punches Caprice and sends him falling to his death in the bridge gears. Beneath the faceless figure's mask, Tracy is shocked to find Breathless Mahoney, who kisses him and then dies. Tracy's name is cleared from the murder of Fletcher. Later, in the middle of a marriage proposal to Tess, Tracy is interrupted by a robbery in progress, and takes off with the Kid, who now calls himself "Dick Tracy, Jr." As they both leave, Tracy tosses Tess a ring and says, "You're one in a million."
Hamilton Camp appears as a store owner. Allen Garfield, John Schuck, and Charles Fleischer make cameos as reporters. Walker Edmiston, John Moschitta, Jr., and Neil Ross provide the voices of each radio announcer.
That same year, Mutrux and Linson eventually took the property to Paramount Pictures, who began developing screenplays, offered Steven Spielberg the director's position, and brought in Universal Pictures to co-finance. Universal put John Landis forward as a candidate for director, courted Clint Eastwood for the title role, and commissioned Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr. to write the screenplay. "Before we were brought on, there were several failed scripts at Universal," reflected Epps, "then it went dormant, but John Landis was interested in Dick Tracy, and he brought us in to write it." Landis left Dick Tracy following the controversial on-set accident on (1983), in which actor Vic Morrow was killed. Walter Hill then came on board to direct with Joel Silver as producer. Cash and Epps wrote another draft, and Hill approached Warren Beatty for the title role. Pre-production had progressed as far as set building, but the film was stalled when artistic control issues arose with Beatty, a fan of the Dick Tracy comic strip. but changed his mind. "It never occurred to me to direct the movie," Beatty admitted, "but finally, like most of the movies that I direct, when the time comes to do it, I just do it because it's easier than going through what I'd have to go through to get somebody else to do it." As a result, Beatty and Disney reached a contracted agreement whereby any budget overruns on Dick Tracy would be deducted from Beatty's fee as producer, director, and star. Beatty and regular collaborator Bo Goldman significantly rewrote the dialogue but lost a Writers Guild arbitration and did not receive screen credit. which began to rise once filming started. It quickly jumped to $30 million and then $47 million as its final production budget. Disney spent an additional $54 million on the marketing campaign, resulting in a total of $101 million spent overall. The financing for Dick Tracy came from Disney's Touchstone Pictures and Silver Screen Partners, as well as Beatty's own production company, Mulholland Productions. Madonna, who was then in a relationship with Beatty, pursued the part of Breathless Mahoney, but offered to work for scale to avoid any appearance of nepotism. Her resulting paycheck for the film was just $35,000.
For Storaro, the limited color palette was the most challenging aspect of production. "These are not the kind of colors the audience is used to seeing," he noted. "These are much more dramatic in strength, in saturation. Comic strip art is usually done with very simple and primitive ideas and emotions," Storaro theorized. "One of the elements is that the story is usually told in vignette, so what we tried to do is never move the camera at all. Never. Try to make everything work into the frame." with the exception of Al Pacino (Big Boy Caprice), who improvised his own designs, ignoring the rather overweight character of the strip.
Dick Tracy is also the first film to use digital audio. In a December 1990 interview with The New York Times, Elfman criticized the growing tendency to use digital technology for sound design and dubbing purposes. "I detest contemporary scoring and dubbing in cinema. Film music as an art took a deep plunge when Dolby stereo hit. Stereo has the capacity to make orchestral music sound big and beautiful and more expansive, but it also can make sound effects sound four times as big. That began the era of sound effects over music."
It was Madonna's idea to include the film as part of her Blond Ambition World Tour. Max Allan Collins lobbied to write the film's novelization long before Disney had even greenlighted Dick Tracy in 1988. "I hated the idea that anyone else would write a Tracy novel," Collins explained. After much conflict with Disney, It sold almost one million copies prior to the film's release.
Although Disney was impressed by the opening weekend gross, Disney, in particular, was expecting the film to earn match the previous year's success with Batman (1989).
Vincent Canby of The New York Times reviewed: "Dick Tracy has just about everything required of an extravaganza: a smashing cast, some great Stephen Sondheim songs, all of the technical wizardry that money can buy, and a screenplay that observes the fine line separating true comedy from lesser camp." Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly gave a mixed review, but was impressed by Madonna's performance. "Dick Tracy is an honest effort but finally a bit of a folly. It could have used a little less color and a little more flesh and blood," Gleiberman concluded.
In his heavily negative review for The Washington Post, Desson Thomson criticized Disney's hyped marketing campaign, and the film in general. "Dick Tracy is Hollywood's annual celebration of everything that's wrong with Hollywood," he stated. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone magazine cited that Warren Beatty, at 52 years old, was too old for the part. He also found similarities with Batman (1989), in which both films involve "a loner hero, a grotesque villain, a blond bombshell, a marketable pop soundtrack and a no-mercy merchandising campaign," Travers continued. "But Batman possesses something else: a psychological depth that gives the audience a stake in the characters. Tracy sticks to its eye-poppingly brilliant surface. Though the film is a visual knockout, it's emotionally impoverished."
Although Max Allan Collins (then a Dick Tracy comic-strip writer) had conflicts with Disney concerning the novelization, he gave a positive review for the finished film. He praised Beatty for hiring an elaborate design team and his decision to mimic the strip's limited color palette. Collins also enjoyed Beatty's performance, both the prosthetic makeup and characterization of the rogues gallery, as well as the Stephen Sondheim music. However, he believed the filmmakers still sacrificed the storyline in favor of the visual design. Storaro was also honored for his work by both the American Society of Cinematographers and British Society of Cinematographers.
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts gave awards to Sylbert, Caglione and Drexler at the 44th British Academy Film Awards. Pacino, Canonero, editor Richard Marks, and both the sound design and visual effects departments received nominations. At the 48th Golden Globe Awards, Pacino and Sondheim (for both "Sooner of Later and "What Can You Lose") were nominated for their work, while Dick Tracy lost the Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) to Green Card (1990) and the Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film to Ghost (1990). Cagilione and Drexler ended up winning Best Make-up, while Warren Beatty (Best Actor), Madonna (Best Actress), Pacino (Supporting Actor), and Charlie Korsmo (Performance by a Younger Actor) received nominations. Canonero was also nominated once more for her costume design. Film score composer Danny Elfman and Sondheim ("More") received individual nominations at the Grammy Awards.
While there has not been any sequels in either television or motion picture form, there has been sequels in novel form. Shortly after the release of the 1990 film, Max Allan Collins wrote Dick Tracy Goes To War. The story is set after the opening of World War II and involves Dick Tracy's enlistment into the U.S. Navy, working for their Military Intelligence Division (as he did in the comic strip). In the story, Nazi sabotouers Black Pearl and Mrs. Pruneface (Pruneface's widow) set up a sabotage/espionage operation out of Caprice's old headquarters in the Club Ritz. For their activities, they recruit B.B. Eyes, The Mole, and Shakey. Their reign of terror, culminating in an attempt to bomb a weapons plant, is averted by Tracy. A year after "War" was released, Collins wrote a third novel entitled Dick Tracy Meets His Match, in which Dick Tracy finally follows through in his marriage proposal to Tess Trueheart.
Category:1990 films Category:1990s action films Category:American action comedy films Category:Best Song Academy Award winners Category:Detective films Category:Films based on comic strips Category:Films directed by Warren Beatty Category:Films whose art director won the Best Art Direction Academy Award Category:Films about organized crime in the United States Category:Touchstone Pictures films Category:Films set in Chicago, Illinois Category:Films set in the 1930s
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![9. EP WoMD: Dick Tracy (intro and gameplay) [HD]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110104075405im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gRplEaRCuT0/2.jpg "9. EP WoMD: Dick Tracy (intro and gameplay) [HD]")
