Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jun 14, 2025 | 7 comments

REEL RETRO CINEMA: New looks at old flicks and their comics connections…

By ROB KELLY

After the cultural and box office explosion of 1989’s Batman, every movie studio worked feverishly to get their own potential superhero franchise onto the silver screen. Some had to start from scratch, but luckily for Disney, they already had the rights to a property they thought would fit the bill: Dick Tracy.

Hollywood superstar Warren Beatty had ideas on making a Dick Tracy movie as far back as 1975. The rights changed hands a few times during the 1970s, getting close enough in 1980 for legendary Superman “Creative Consultant” (read: screenwriter) Tom Mankiewicz to put together an early treatment that features a real grabber of an opening: a dying man is describing to a police sketch artist who it was that shot him. The artist renders all the details except the face, and the man calls out, “That’s him!” — revealing the villain of the piece is the classic Dick Tracy foe the Blank.

This eventually fell apart when Tracy creator Chester Gould exerted strict financial and creative controls over the project. It kept bouncing around though, from studio to studio, and people like Steven Spielberg, John Landis, and Walter Hill were all attached to direct at some point. Beatty drifted in and out but returned when the project landed at Disney. Gould had died in 1985, and his estate proved easier to work with. Beatty agreed to star, with producers hoping Martin Scorsese would direct (the mind reels). Finally, Beatty —w ho last directed the Oscar-winning 1981 epic Reds — agreed to do double duty.

Leading up to Dick Tracy’s release on June 15, 1990, Disney pulled every trick out of its marketing hat that it had. It worked for Batman, after all: toys, merchandise, an original soundtrack by a music superstar, a contest sponsored by MTV.

I saw Dick Tracy the day it was released, completely immersed in the hype. I had always loved the character, and the idea of this world being given a Batman-style big budget once-over was just so exciting. I sat down to watch the movie and walked out… a little confused.

Dick Tracy is a mile wide and an inch deep. Beatty and his screenwriters try to infuse the film with some heart and emotional pull (Will Tracy ditch the loyal Tess Trueheart for the more exciting but dangerous Breathless Mahoney? Will the little orphan boy finally let his guard down and bond with Tracy?), but none of that really lands. It’s all there, it’s fine, but you want to get back to our hero taking on his amazing rogues gallery, while looking absolutely smashing doing it. It’s a film of all surfaces, but what surfaces!

Beatty arranged a (pun intended) murderer’s row of talent in front and behind the camera for Dick Tracy — from the first frame, Richard Sylbert’s production design and Vittorio Storaro’s cinematography is a feast for the eyes. Using just six basic colors, all deeply saturated, Dick Tracy announces its unrealness and invites the viewer to adjust. It’s one thing to see these colors in the flat world of comic strips, it’s another to see living, breathing people decked in 100 percent yellow and 100 percent purple. The score, by Danny Elfman (another Batman influence), is bold and brassy, befitting its Depression-era setting.

On screen, however, is where Beatty’s Rolodex (ask your parents, kids) really got a workout. It would be impossible to assemble a more impressive, star-studded cast culled from the annals of Hollywood of days gone by: Al Pacino, James Caan, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Sorvino, Dick Van Dyke, Charles Durning, Estelle Parsons, Mary Woronov, Henry Silva, Mandy Patinkin, William Forsythe, Seymour Cassel, R.G. Armstrong, Michael J. Pollard, Glenn Headly, Catherine O’Hara, and more — many more.

In fact, one of the fun trivia games movie nerds can play while watching Dick Tracy is Spot The Reunion, where actors from previous legendary movies are reunited here for sometimes just one scene (Pacino and Caan: The Godfather, Beatty and Pollard: Bonnie & Clyde, etc.). Beatty fills out his frame with character actors, many of whom Dick Tracy is their final major movie credit (you’d be hard pressed to find a summer blockbuster with a cast with a higher median age).

I will admit, though, I didn’t really appreciate all that when I first saw the movie, and the unusual rhythms and cartoonish abstractions Beatty insists on in Dick Tracy didn’t really work for me. Over time, however, I’ve come to absolutely love how singular the movie is, despite Disney’s hopes it would be a mass appeal blockbuster franchise.

When I watch it now, the parts that work the least for me are the scenes that feel grafted from Batman — the big action finale, leading to the villain falling to his death (sound familiar?) in particular. You can feel that Beatty’s heart just isn’t in it, and he lets Pacino as Big Boy Caprice mutter lines that make no sense and seem to be conjured on the spot just to entertain himself. In 1990, those kinds of eccentricities kept me from really embracing the movie.

That seemed to be the general consensus across the country — Dick Tracy did great in its first few weeks, and then faded. Disney kept it in theaters long enough to ensure it crossed the $100 million mark but, unlike 1989’s Batmania the year before, Dickmania did not rule that summer.

Mumbles

Some of the actors do seem a little lost, buried under all the putty necessary to transform them into Chester Gould’s nightmarish creations. Others, though, are such pros they dominate whatever scene they’re in—Dustin Hoffman is a riot as Mumbles, a henchman with a gossamer spine. Legendary character actor R.G. Armstrong is terse and threatening as Pruneface, and William Forsythe’s Flattop is a sneering, violent weasel with an itchy trigger finger.

I so enjoy seeing all these old-timers have fun that every time Beatty cuts away from them for yet another Madonna performance, I’m rolling my eyes a bit. As an actor I find Madonna leaves a lot to be desired, so while the musical numbers have a wonderful energy, I never felt any heat between her Breathless Mahoney and Beatty’s Dick Tracy (ironically, since they were a couple in real life). Maybe it’s just me, but for my money the late great Glenn Headly as Tess is so much more appealing, I don’t get why Tracy would be tempted to stray for even for a second.

Dick Tracy runs 105 minutes, shockingly short in this day and age of three-hour runtimes almost being the standard for films of this type. Apparently, it was Disney who insisted on cuts, and there are scenes that feel weirdly truncated or spliced together (Catherine O’Hara, as Texie Garcia, never even gets a line). Beatty seemed to know this would probably be the only Dick Tracy movie ever made, so he went for broke. It would be great to see exactly what he had in mind via a director’s cut.

Despite what I just said, Beatty has never quite given up the ghost when it comes to Dick Tracy. He has managed to maintain the rights in subsequent decades, producing two bizarre TV specials (one in 2010 and one in 2023) where he plays Tracy interacting with film historians Leonard Maltin and Ben Mankiewicz and, in the latter, Beatty himself. How these things manage to fulfill whatever contracts allow Beatty to keep Dick Tracy locked up boggles the mind. At almost 90 years old, Beatty can’t possibly play the character again, so what the purpose of this beyond pure ego is a mystery.

Dick Tracy is a weirdly flawed movie, but one that succeeds in ways that Disney probably didn’t appreciate or care about at the time. That has, in my opinion, allowed it to age in ways a lot of its fellow would-be superhero blockbusters have not.

One final thing: Last year, my wife attended the Spooky Empire convention in Orlando, Florida. When I saw one of the guests was William Forsythe, it was just a question of which piece of Dick Tracy arcana would I get him to sign. The movie on Blu-ray, the Flattop from the comically ghastly line of tie-in action figures, or my beloved Dick Tracy treasury edition DC put out as a lark in 1975? I went with the comic, and when I handed it to Mr. Forsythe, I was prepared to explain what I was handing him to sign.

No need. He took one look at the book and lit up, going into detail about how much of a Dick Tracy fan he was and how he had so many ideas for Flattop that didn’t end up making it into the film. He signed the book, and we got a picture with him. Who would have guessed the murderous, dead-eyed Flattop was such a cool dude?

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MORE

— 2004’s CATWOMAN: This Cat Didn’t Land On Its Feet. Click here.

— How the BATMAN ’89 Comics Adaptation Improves Upon the Movie. Click here.

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REEL RETRO CINEMA columnist ROB KELLY is a podcaster, writer, illustrator, and film commentator. You can find his work at robkellycreative.com.