Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 16, 1990 TAG: 9006160270
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
At two hours, it could use the explosive propulsion of "Bat Man" or if not that then some tighter editing. Director and star Warren Beatty leans toward the leisurely, and "Tracy" is certainly in no hurry to get going.
But it has an arsenal of star power in its cast and most of the big names are content to labor amusingly under pounds of makeup. You can tell the bad guys by the layers of latex.
Like Robert Altman's unfairly maligned "Popeye," its a movie that attempts to faithfully bring a bizarre comic strip to life and it does a credible job. The colors from the paint on the automobiles to the actors' overcoats are bright romper-room hues. The cityscapes are luminous and lovely. And the effects mainly focus on stylized two-fisted action.
Beatty plays the square, square-jawed, plain-clothes cop with the yellow fedora and wrist radio. His girl is the adoring florist, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly). The faithful sidekick is a voracious orphan simply named Kid (Charlie Korsmo).
And the bad guys are human grotesques with monikers such as The Rodent, The Brow, Pruneface and Itchy.
In a city full of gangsters and municipal corruption, Tracy is a true blue detective dedicated to battling crime on all fronts.
His chief adversary is Big Boy Caprice, a hulking gangster who looks like an inflated balloon. Al Pacino brings the same manic ravings to Big Boy that he brought to the drug lord in "Scarface." Pacino and Dustin Hoffmann (who plays the nervous snitch "Mumbles") deserve a lot of credit for sustaining interest. It's fun to watch such acclaimed actors chewing up the screen with such weird characterizations.
Madonna, of course, was a major part of the movie's hype. She plays bad girl Breathless Mahoney, a torch singer who utters naughty lines that could have been written by Mae West. In some lingerie perhaps a little too revealing for the youngsters in the audience Friday, she had both little boys and big boys sitting up in their seats. That aside, this may be one of her better movie performances. Her screen presence is undeniable and her sultry vocals reflect the 1940s, though Stephen Sondheim's tunes aren't some of his more memorable.
Along with the actors previously mentioned, there is a battalion of other names to look for in the cast including Estelle Parsons and Michael J. Pollard, who date back to Beatty's "Bonnie and Clyde" days.
The real stars, however, are the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and the art department, who make it so visually compelling.
"Dick Tracy" may not be the most riveting action movie based on a comic but neither is it the unmitigated disaster many predicted.
VIEWER `Dick Tracy' A Touchstone picture at Tanglewood Mall Cinema (989-6165). Two hours long. Rated PG for revealing costumes, violence and some double entendres.
by CNB