Some movies define their times; some are merely born of them. In the right hands, the latter can be as inspired as the former. Warren Beatty had been trying to get a film version of Chester Gould’s comic strip Dick Tracy made since the ’70s, but chances are that any Dick Tracy he might’ve made in 1975 would’ve turned out very different from the one released in 1990. The version Beatty ended up directing is a movie very much of its era: a loud, cartoony summer blockbuster that probably wouldn’t have been possible without the success of the previous two summer’s smashes, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Batman. And yet Beatty’s Dick Tracy is no work-for-hire cash-in. It’s an accomplished stylistic exercise, reconsidering the pop culture of the ’30s through the perspective of the late 20th century. And, in retrospect, it’s a ...
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