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 .
