Dick Tracy (1990)

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day...

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty, 1990) Chester Gould's gangster comic strip, "Dick Tracy," started October 4, 1931 and, because it was so popular, it migrated to radio, movie serials, and even a short-lived television series. Gould's style was flamboyant, violent—bullets passed through bad-guy's bodies—and more than a little serio-comic (the villains had names that matched their physiques, so "Flat-Top" actually had a flat-head, and such). Gould made no mistake whose side Tracy was on, as his jaw was so square, you could slice sandwich meat on it, and sometimes ventured into the techno-exotic with Tracy's "two-way wrist radio" beating the I-watch by some 50 years. About the time I started reading it, Tracy and family was traveling to the moon on a magnetic Space Coupe and Tracy's son fell in love with the daughter of the Moon's Supreme Leader!

So much for the grit of a crime strip.

Tracy was popular, and after the successes of recycled comics on movies and Broadway, movie people started to buy up marketable properties. "Dick Tracy" was picked up in the 1980's for the inevitable film adaptation, and went through "development hell" through the hands of many creatives and studios, starting with United Artists, then a co-production between Universal and Paramount, and stars like Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere and Tom Selleck (the usual suspects in the 80's) were sought out to star as Tracy. And Warren Beatty.

Beatty'd wanted to make a Tracy movie since 1975, when the rights weren't available, and watched from the wings as the film went through script development, director changes, and studio involvement, then purchased the rights in 1985, taking the film to Disney, and directing the film himself when the studio's Jeffrey Katzenberg couldn't interest any other director to take the reins. Beatty had already left the project once when director Walter Hill wanted to make the film more realistic and violent. Beatty had another idea, making a stylized homage to the old-style strip with a limited (just seven, with no gradients), but eye-popping color pallet, supervised by production designer Richard Sylbert.

With Beatty onboard, casting came easily...almost too easily. Glenne Headly played girlfriend Tess Trueheart, Charlie Corsmo played an orphan whom Tracy will eventually adapt, Seymour Cassel as co-hort Sam Catchem, James Keane as Pat Patton, and Charles Durning as Chief Brandon. But, as he did with Reds, Beatty started to hire pals to fill up the film and take on smaller characters, particularly the villains, who—unlike the leads—would be encased in prosthetic make-up (designed by John Caglione and Doug Drexler) to resemble Gould's group of bad-guy uglies.

Entombed in polyurethane are Al Pacino (as main villain "Big Boy" Caprice), James Caan (as a "Godfather"-type), Dustin Hoffman, Paul Sorvino, R.G. Armstrong, Henry Silva, William Forsythe, Ed O'Ross and other character actors who get the make-up, while Kathy Bates, Dick Van Dyke, Alan Garfield, John Schuck, Hamilton Camp, Catherine O'Hara, Estelle Parsons, and Henry Jones get minute screen-time, just enough for recognition.

And then, there's Madonna. The pop-star's role as a "bad-girl" femme fatale was, no doubt, beefed up when "The Material Girl" was cast, and of all the cast-members she seems to get the most screen-time besides Beatty, effectively crowding out the "Tess Trueheart" storyline for vamping in the tried and true Mae West manner. To be sure, she gives the movie a lot of cross-promotional material, releasing an album in support, and doing her best with the Stephen Sondheim songs Beatty acquired for the film. But, the role is slight in importance and its prominence merely there to put posteriors in theater-seats. So, she was indulged.

Which seems to be the over-arching—emphasis on the "arch"—theme of the film. Studio-bound and slightly inert, that limited pallet (which only distracts rather than serves a purpose) makes the enterprise look cheaper than it should, and, overall, Beatty's Tracy is an over-indulgent mess, flabby with excess, and uneven in pace, when the model of the thing should have been the tight, break-away austerity of film-noir. The thing went so far over-budget and the results still look dodgy and stagey. In fact, the film reminds of something that achieved the same results with greater success but hemmed in with a bargain basement budget in the 1960's.

And that was the "Batman" TV-show. It, too, had stars as villains, with a lot of make-up and a lot of scenery-chewing, the comic aspect of the characters were played up, the fights were unbelievably choreographed and tongues were placed firmly in cheeks. However, the "Batman" TV series had a "camp" sensibility, deliberately over-staging the drama and acting styles to achieve comic effect. It knew it was over-the-top and aimed high to achieve it. It knew it was deliberately jumping the shark (before "jumping the shark" was a "thing") Dick Tracy has very little of that intentionally self-deprecating humor, and plods along like it knows it's funny...even when it isn't. And although Adam West's deliberately haughty Batman persona wouldn't play for Tracy, give West his due in finding a way to effectively tight-rope the material; Beatty plays the character fairly straight...which is a bit dull. Pacino knows that he's going for comedy, but he doesn't have the timing or comic discipline to make it work. Sure, he gives it the energy (he always does), but that doesn't make it funny.

My memory of Dick Tracy was that it was elephantine in the way the film version of Annie was, but with none of the charm, or the ability to project something genuine without hedging its bets, lest it be thought unhip. Everything is encased in artifice, even in its rooting for "the good guys" with their sense of right and wrong. If they can't even do that with a straight face, then they just don't know Dick. 

The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid

The Great Northfield, Minnesota Raid (Philip Kaufman, 1972) Genre-busting western (following two years after the similarly revisionist Little Big Man) by Philip Kaufman back in his wild indie days about the splintering of the Younger-James Gang, due to their most notorious crime, the theft of Northfield's First National Bank, "the biggest bank west of the Mississippi." Starring Cliff Robertson and produced by Robertson's production company, the film was obviously massaged as a vehicle for Robertson, if not for the fact that Robert Duvall makes the most of the weirder, more psychotic role of Jesse James, cutting through his scenes like a murderously sharp scythe through prairie wheat. By comparison, Robertson has the more central, but goonier role of Cole Younger—distractedly visionary outlaw cursed with an eye toward "wonderments" and other bright objects that tended to throw him off-task.

The world is on the cusp of change—one of those "wonderments" is a steam-powered organ that proves to be both a blessing and a curse to the Younger-James Gang's ability to fight authority, rob banks, and line their pockets in the process. Jesse can't be bothered with "wonderments;" they get in the way of his "visions" for their exploits, which come upon him in nearly incomprehensible rants. Cole, however, always wonders how the outskirts of the Industrial Revolution can make their burgling business a little easier (he sports a brine-soaked leather vest to protect him from bullets).* Pretty soon, they'll move from banks to trains and the stakes will get that much higher. But for the moment, their targets are stationary, and their tactics not unknown to today's white-collar criminals.**

That it was also the beginning of the end for the gang, with Northfield's populace turning on the bandits during the course of the prolonged robbery, ending their "Robin Hood" reputations, and leaving a couple of the gang dead in the street, shot by civilians. The romance with the criminals would go on (so long as they were dead and not stealing town-folks' money anymore) in fictional pulps (and Cole Younger would survive and go on the lecture circuit...yes, really), but the West changed around them as so many of these "sunset" Westerns of the 70's were showing, making them legends...and you have to past your prime (or dead) to be that. Kaufman's take on it is intermittently fun, long on ideas, but short on entertainment.

* Jesse could be seen as the evangelical, and Cole the scientific , world-views. No wonder they broke up. Jesse died 2 1/2 weeks before Charles Darwin died.

** Before the raid, they prime the pump by encouraging stories of the bank's safety, driving up deposits to ensure they make away with a huge haul. They could work for Enron!