Dick Tracy, detective

Better than I expected. The little flick's stylishly done, with atmospheric dark shadow, eye-catching set-ups and strong character close-ups. The storyline's sometimes hard to follow, but maybe that's just me. Then too, there's more to the mystery than just who baddie Splitface really is, such as the deadly significance of the number '14' or the apparently needless money payoffs. And catch that grabber opening, worthy of the best noir - (so why is a sexy woman walking down a dark street in the middle of the night, alone? Good thing it's only a movie.)

Sure, the production's still a cheap programmer, while the acting is just routine. But the flick does have quality background, namely RKO during that studio's noirish 1940's. So give it a try, even if you're not especially a Tracy fan. And even though they don't always blend, the good touches do add up.

(In Passing - Growing up in a small mountain town in the '40's, the Tracy cartoon strip really stimulated my imagination, what with sinister deformed types like Flat-Top, Pruneface, Littleface, and Breathless Mahoney, all pictured here in the opening credits. I guess I've never outgrown them, even as a now geezer. Anyway, thanks again to strip creator and screenwriter Chester Gould for his own contagious imagination that still shows even here.)