Welcome to Week Twenty-Two of “Monday at the Movies,” in
which the Cinema King revisits some of his childhood favorites.
Dick Tracy (1990)
– Of the two films under consideration this week,
Dick Tracy is the one that has not had the same effect on me in the
twenty years since I first saw it. If
nothing else,
Dick Tracy is as close
as film came to translating comics (before
Sin
City came along, at least). Its colors
are vibrant and its morals are downright Manichaean, making it an easy film to
watch. Director Warren Beatty also stars
as the comic strip detective in a yellow coat, but it’s the criminals at whom
he fires his signature tommy gun that steal the audience’s attention: Al Pacino
as Big Boy Caprice, William Forsythe as Flattop, and Madonna as torch singer
Breathless Mahoney. But while the colors
look great and lend the film a very intriguing visual style, the film hasn’t
aged well in terms of substance. Some of
the performances come across as wooden (though I suspect Beatty is deliberately
one-note as the do-gooder, Madonna’s work isn’t captivating), while others (ahem,
Pacino) are overly blustery and cringe-worthy.
What sells the movie is that it’s populated by tons of high concepts and
interesting visuals, characters with cool faces or wacked-out wardrobes, but
Dick Tracy is almost overpopulated, and
as a result some elements don’t make sense at the end. I’d have liked to have seen more of Dustin
Hoffman as Mumbles (an apt moniker), but as it is I’m still not certain what
motivated a few characters, especially The Blank (“No-Face” in my childhood
parlance). Rewatching
Dick Tracy brought back memories
(especially of the complete trading card set I collected), but through my
rose-tinted glasses I recognize that there is a truly great movie waiting to be
made with Chester Gould’s source material.
The Rocketeer (1991)
–
The Rocketeer, however, has aged
remarkably well and remains one of my all-time favorite superhero movies (a
list, I suppose, I’ll have to make once I get around to Top-10’ing this site). It might even be one of my all-time favorite
movies, period, if only because I can’t watch it without my mood changing for
the better. If you’ve never seen it, for
shame. Billy Campbell stars as Cliff
Secord, who discovers a rocket-pack designed by Howard Hughes (Terry O’Quinn);
with the help of his mechanic Peevy (Alan Arkin), Cliff becomes The Rocketeer
to save his girlfriend Jenny Blake (Jennifer Connelly at her most beautiful)
from dashing Nazi actor Neville Sinclair (Timothy Dalton). Really, the only thing preventing this film
from being a perfect one is that it’s a little cheesy in parts, but I’ve found
that a bit of nostalgia goes great with cheese.
The performances here are solid and endearing, and the 1930s atmosphere
is pulled off with such grace that it’s no wonder director Joe Johnston was
later asked to helm another period-piece superhero flick,
Captain America: The First Avenger.
The Rocketeer is a lot like
the Indiana Jones franchise, but with more heart than you might expect; while
the superheroics are all top-notch, the movie is surprisingly earnest in its
sentiment. Campbell and Connelly are
almost star-crossed as lovers, and the development of their relationship over
the course of the film elicited a surprise mistiness in my ocular region. That’s right, true believers, a more
emotional filmgoer might have wept at
The
Rocketeer. Even if you don’t cry,
The Rocketeer is such delightful fun
that you’ll want to watch it again once the credits roll. Oh, hell:
maybe it
is perfect.
That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the
Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!
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