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Warren Beatty successfully bringing the comic strip to life , the renowned police detective Dick Tracy who this time tries to solve a case involving Big Boy , the public enemy nº 1 . Beatty wears the caps on all fronts , as he is actor , writer , producer and filmmaker , incarnating the legendary police detective Dick Tracy from Chester Gould's comics and his relentless crusade against crime . However his Tracy is somewhat flat in comparison other comic book heroes . Dick Tracy is the only man tough enough to take on ranting mobster boss Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) and his band of menacing mobsters (William Forsythe and Dustin Hoffman who made a small character as Mumbles as a favor for Warren Beatty) . Big Boy and his gang set out a wave of crime that bring them face to face with dapper Tracy . Dedicated to his work but at the same time devoted to his loyal sweetheart (Glenne Headly ), Tracy find himself torn between love and duty . Tracy becomes even more difficult when he gets saddled with an engaging orphan (Charlie Korsmo) . The comic strip detective finds his life vastly complicated when a singing siren named Mahoney (a seductive Madonna) makes advances towards him while he is attempting to fight Big Boy Caprice's united mob . Later on , Tracy tries to find his kidnapped girlfriend while Big Boy is on the loose .

This comic strip spring to life similarly the original drawings and being faithfully recreated , though sometimes looks like an extended stage musical . The bad guys all have overblown features and they and the cops , journalists all wear different coloured coats to correspond to the drawings in the original comic strips created by Chester Gould . The timeless and imaginative settings capture the essence rather than reality of the city . There's so much music in the movie mostly from Mandy Patinkin and especially Madonna as the singer Breathless Mahoney doing her best screen acting to date . Good though excessive performances from Al Pacino who is perfectly cast as the gangster Big Boy looking like a caricaturist impression of a cartoon and splendid Dustin Hoffman as his hoodlum named Mumbles . The make-up used for all of the villains was based directly on how they were drawn by Chester Gould in the original comic strip , the only exception was Big Boy Caprice, whose make-up was designed by Al Pacino himself. People expecting Gothic scenarios and spectacular action of Batman may be disappointed , but moviegoers will be thrilled . Colorful and stylistically superior cinematography by the Italian Vittorio Storaro , shot in a few colors , the main colors in the film are only six that the original comic strip appeared in: red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, plus black and white . Jolly and amusing musical score by Danny Elffman .

Other films about this classic comic book character are the followings : ¨Dick Tracy¨ (1947) 15 chapters starred by Ralph Byrd and directed by John English and Ray Taylor ; ¨Dick Tracy Detective¨ (1945) the first feature movie directed by William Berke with Morgan Conway and Jane Greer ; ¨Tracy returns¨ 15 chapter serial directed by William Witney with Ralph Byrd ; ¨Tracy meets gruesome ¨(1947) with Ralph Byrd and Boris Karloff ; ¨Tracy vs Crime Inc¨; ¨Tracy vs Cueball¨(1946) by Gordon Douglas with Morgan Conway and Anne Jeffreys ; ¨Tracy's dilemma¨ by John Rawlins with Ralph Byrd and Jack Lambert , among others .

Labor of love for star and director Warren Beatty, Dick Tracy was a film I hated when it first came out. I was a kid and stupid, only caring about what's cool. What was cool then (and sadly still is) was "dark and gritty" heroes like Batman. Dick Tracy was considered corny and lame. When I first watched it I thought it was a kids' movie and I was at that age where anything like that I hated. Happily, I feel much differently about the film now that I'm older.

Dick Tracy is a live-action cartoon, with eye-popping visuals decked out in bright primary colors. It's a beautiful film to behold. Everyone involved in the stylized look of this movie should be proud. The sets, the lighting, the matte paintings, the makeup and effects are all superior to any CGI crap we get today. Real work and passion went into this and it shows.

The cast is great. Beatty is criticized by many for not being the right fit for Tracy or for being too old. While he's not a perfect representation of the character, I feel he does quite well and his age never occurred to me while watching it. Madonna gives easily her best performance in this movie. That's meant slightly as a slam I guess, as most of her other work is very weak. But it's also meant as a compliment. Here she plays to her strengths: sex appeal and "oomph." Her double entendres and skin-tight dresses make Breathless Mahoney a very memorable character. There's also some fine support from Glenne Headley and Charlie Korsmo. And who can forget the villains! Chester Gould's distinctive-looking villains come to life thanks to superb makeup, played in many cases by uncredited stars. The leader of the bunch is Big Boy Caprice, played by the wonderfully over-the-top Al Pacino. Pacino was having a lot of fun with the role and it shows.

My only real complaint lies in the music. Not the Stephen Sondheim songs -- they're great. But the Danny Elfman musical score is way too similar to the one he did for Batman the year before. It's very lazy and doesn't seem to fit the action of the film. Forget what you've read from naysayers about this movie and judge it for yourself. It's a fun movie with exceptional visuals and colorful ambiance.

First and Formost, this movie hits the comic strip right on the nose (it was goofy looking and freak'n violent). The one thing that always gets me is that we have detectives, feme fatales, rutheless gangsters, exploding cars and machine guns, all done in super bright rainbow colors. I find that the bright colors really pull this movie off, It conveys the whole "comic book" idea, better than the giant balloons from Batman, the verbaitum sound effects from X men, and certainly those annoying "panel" shots from hulk.

After seeing Dick Tracy in the 6.99$ bin at Future Shop I decided to give it a go with no previous knowledge and being a big fan of Mafia and Crime movies. I was very surprised to see a very fun, smart entertaining movie with solid performances throughout. The movie moves along well, it has of course another solid performance from Warren Beatty, but the real standouts of the film are Al Pacino and Madonna. I was happy to find out that Pacino was nominated for his performance as an over the top gangster trying to take down the city. Madonna was great as the damsel in distress, she really impressed me and added depth to her performance. If you go in with the attitude of wanting to watch a fun, smart movie with great acting and a solid script then give Dick Tracy a try. I don't think you will be disappointed. And Watch for the cameos from Paul Sorvino, James Caan, Kathy Bates and Dustin Hoffman among others.

If Dick Tracy was in black and white, the pope wouldn't be religious. Giving a new sense to the concept of color in a movie, we are offered an unique experience throughout a comic-strip world, and it's one of the few movies which succeeded in doing so, thanks to a serious script, good direction, great performances (Al Pacino is astonishing) and most importantly a powerful mix of cinematography, art direction and costume design. Using only primary colors, the experience is quite different from anything we have seen before. And there is also a quite successful hommage to all the gangster-movie genre, pratically extinct from modern cinema. Overall, I see this movie as a fresh attempt and a touch of originality to a cinema which relies more and more on the old and already-seen formulas. 7 out of 10.