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Warren Beatty directs and stars in Disney’s big budget adaptation of Chester Gould’s 1930s comic strip about a square-jawed detective caught in a constant battle of whack-a-mole with a horde of colorful gangsters. The screenplay by Top Gun‘s Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr features Al Pacino as the film’s major baddie, Big Boy Caprice, a hunchbacked screamer who strongarms all the other gangsters into working for him. As Tracy, Beatty is looking for enough evidence to lock Big Boy away. Madonna co-stars as Breathless Mahoney, a slinky nightclub singer who could help Tracy by testifying against Big Boy in court — but only if Tracy betrays his sweetheart, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly) by hooking up with her. Further complicating matters is a mysterious faceless character, ‘The Blank’, who seems to be working against both Big Boy and Tracy for control of the city.

Dick Tracy is a visually striking film that embraces a cartoon-like aesthetic. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now, The Last Emperor) washes the film in bold, primary colors, and production designer Richard Sylbert (Chinatown, Reds) blends stylized sets with matte paintings and visual effects to bring environments to life in a compelling, eye-catching way. John Caglione Jr’s and Doug Drexler’s impressive makeup effects bring Gould’s outlandish gangster characters to three-dimensional life. Milena Canonero’s costumes and Danny Elfman’s propulsive score are also remarkable. The film even features five original lounge songs written by the legendary Stephen Sondheim. Simply said, Dick Tracy is a towering aesthetic triumph.

If only it had a story to match its artistic achievements. The main plot is as dull and generic as any cops-and-robbers story ever was. The film starts ‘in medias res’, lacking an engaging inciting incident or any dramatic hook strong enough to pull us into Dick Tracy’s world and make us care about its characters. Cash and Epps almost make up for it with Tracy’s internal conflicts — his struggles to confess his love to Tess Trueheart and resist the temptations of Breathless Mahoney, as well as his relationship with a runaway orphan boy (Hook‘s Charlie Korsmo) who begins to idolize him. Whenever Tracy is with these three characters, the movie works. All that stuff with Big Boy Caprice and the other gangsters? Not so much.

Beatty phones in a curiously unremarkable performance in the title role, while Pacino goes gratingly over-the-top. Korsmo is terrific as ‘The Kid’, though, and Madonna is put to better use in this movie than probably any other role in her filmography. The film features a lot of great actors in small roles, including Dick Van Dyke, Mandy Patinkin, Charles Durning, William Forsythe, Paul Sorvino, James Caan, and Kathy Bates. Dustin Hoffman gets the juiciest of the bit parts as ‘Mumbles’, an unintelligible gangster who wins a few laughs.

Even though it’s largely an exercise in style over substance, Dick Tracy is so superlatively done in many regards, that it’s worth a gander for those who appreciate cinematic craftsmanship.

Academy Awards: Best Art Direction (Richard Sylbert), Best Makeup (John Caglione Jr, Doug Drexler), Best Song (Stephen Sondheim for “Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)”)

Oscar Nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Al Pacino), Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro), Costume Design (Milena Canonero), Sound