Afouotos
Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
ChicDragon
It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.
Stephanie
There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes
Scotty Burke
It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
Prismark10
Splitface is the first of four Dick Tracy films from RKO. Morgan Conway is dull as the square jawed comic strip police hero. The film is really a noirish police thriller than a comic strip movie.Only the casting of Mike Mazurki as the scarred Splitface gives it a comic strip menace, a man who can stab people in a brutal fashion as he goes after the people who put him behind bars. There is also another villain, astrologer and hypnotist Professor Starling who can mesmerise people with his gaze.The film is pacy, we get Tess Trueheart waiting for a date with Tracy but really it comes across as creaky. It just goes to show that Warren Beatty really did an excellent job in his film version many decades later.
gorf
The movie from the 90s has a lot of good in it, but it doesn't come close to the 1945 version. The 90s version is a bit slow in some parts. The 40s movie is just an hour long, and fast- paced. The 90s version is too weird for people who are not familiar with the comic strip. The 40s version is like a classic Sherlock Holmes movie. The 90s version had some unnecessary sexual content (rated PG) in it. In the 40s version it is nonexistent. The main villain in the 90s version is annoying. The 40s villain is frightening. And best of all, Madonna isn't in the 40s version! For an old movie, it is a bit gruesome. Splitface (the serial killer) is like a "modern" day Jack the Ripper. While there's not a lot of blood, there's a scene where he kills another criminal that is pretty horrific. We never directly see the knife enter the body, just some slashing motions...but we know very well what happened to him. In some ways, Dick Tracy feels almost like a horror movie. The scariest part is that Splitface seems like someone you could actually meet in the park at night. He's disfigured, but doesn't growl or scream like Leatherface. And he's not invincible like Jason Vorhees either. He acts like a regular human...except for the killings. The movie's light-hearted humor stops it from becoming too dark, and in the end, the good guys win. But I don't think it's a good idea to let small children watch this movie.
Andy Fish
If you're expecting MALTESE FALCON you're in the wrong place. This first in the RKO Dick Tracy movies based on Chester Gould's hardboiled policeman is very faithful to the source material and a LOT of fun.The cast is well chosen and Morgan Conway looks like he stepped right off the comics page.What is unexpected is the inky black noirish camera work, something that was very rare for a B-picture. The entire series was entertaining, with Ralph Byrd replacing Conway for the third and fourth installments, and the two earliest entries were geared towards an adult audience as shown in the violence depicted.Pull the stick out of your crack, sit back and enjoy some very entertaining little films from a more innocent time, when our good guys were someone to look up to.
Hitchcoc
If you had given Dick Tracy's name to any police type in any movie of the forties, it would be indistinguishable. The fact is that while this is a modestly entertaining movie, the comic strip being of it is just not there. Where is the technology, the distinctive sense of the comic strip? It's just not there. There is some semblance of humor, the byplay among the other detectives and Tess's frustration with dating the great detective (she never gets to go to dinner), but it still doesn't reproduce the comic strip. All that considered, it's a decent movie with an interesting plot. Like so many Tracy characters, Split Face is carrying around his angst, wanting to get back at those who convicted him. He is nasty, but has the fatal flaw of carelessness. Tracy is pretty dull, but I was a religious reader of the comic strip as a child and liked his silence. His romantic relationship always seemed forced to me. A real comic book hero shouldn't have time for women, right.