Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

dbborroughs Ralph Byrd stalled forever his career by taking the role of Chester Gould's crime fighting hero. Byrd would play the role in three more serials, two hour long feature films (taking over when another actor proved unsatisfactory) and a TV series. Byrd could never really get away from Tracy and was type cast as the character even though he took a variety of other roles. Not to put too fine a point on it this, along with its three sequels, represent one of mystery films finest hours. In all of the films we have an excellent mix of crime, mystery and action. The film works as several different things all at the same time and all of them good. The plot of this serial has Tracy battling the Spider, aka The Lame one, who is bent on taking over the world. He's so bad that he is eliminating all the other criminals in town as well has kidnapping and twisting the brother of Tracy through vile means. Its heady stuff and a real joy to watch. It's a big story told on a large canvas with great special effects (The model work here, as with all Republic serials is as good as it gets). You really need to see this serial and its sequels since they all are a great deal of fun.

jalilidalili After watching all 15 episodes I have to tell you that this Dick Tracy seems to have paved the way for some of today's action heroes taken from the classic comics. The plot line is simply put - silly (a big crime ring cooperates with foregin goverments, wants to blackmail their own government, brainwashes people...). There seem to be hundreds of things going on and not a single case is solved. Tracy comes in, gets in a fight, the evil scheme is spoiled (case closed), bad guys escape, Dick follows them and get's in terrible danger. End of episode, right before Dick is about to die a horrible death. The next episode opens with a long revision of the previous story and Dick escapes unharmed. Meets with friends and the new problem arises. They investigate for a few minutes and then the same story all over. All right, the effects were awesome for the time when this was made and the ideas for how the villains planed to take charge were probably highly original back then (but were copied ever sense), still, not a single episode seems to have any depth. It was just jumping from one quick and shallow attempt by the Lame one to do whatever it was he wanted to do (there never seemed to be a grand plan behind his actions) to another. All in all, if they wouldn't repeat those previous episode scenes at the beginning of each episode and if the episodes took some time to develop a story it might have been good. Now (especially after watching it at once) as one long Dick Tracy session, I was really disappointed by the shallowness, but pleasantly surprised by the great effects.

Travis_Moran Now I've never read a Dick Tracy comic. They were before my time. But I had a good time watching this serial. It moved well and wasn't all just crashes and fight scenes.There are a lot of pretty cool effects considering when this was made. The flying wing was my favourite. It looked like an old Northrop YB-35 with the props in front---and was obviously supposed to be bigger. Nice model though. Some other notable effects were the zeppelin crash and the shaking Golden Gate bridge.Some other decent stuff I liked was the speeded-up secret message on the phonograph disc, the mad doctor with the cat (he was cool), the little belt morse code transmitter (reminded me of Batman's utility belt), and Gwen (I liked how she could fly a plane, and do most other stuff the men did---what surprised me is that they didn't have her get captured by the spider gang at some point).One particularly goofy effect gave me a laugh: At the end of one chapter Dick Tracy's plane crashes into a bridge. The beginning of the next chapter shows the crash and then Dick getting up out of the plane wreckage, brushing off his clothes, and walking off. Pretty hokey there. And it seems Dick was fond of double-parachuting to get out of trouble---sorta funny.The stories were not bad. There was plenty of plot to keep me interested and it was plausible---except maybe for a couple of the escapes after the disastrous endings of the previous chapter like I mentioned above. Now it seems the spider gang tried its hand at almost every type of crime before finally getting squashed by Dick Tracy. Let's see...there was bridge-wrecking, plane-motor-stealing, counterfeiting (attempted anyway), illegal brain surgery (on Tracy's bro), gold stealing (2 instances of this...the prospector's mine and the ship), and stealing jewellery.And of course there are the typical fist fights that everyone expects. As usual, everyone involved gets up and walks away unharmed, without even any dirt or wrinkles on their clothes (as per the unwritten code of all serials it seems). Gun battles occur frequently, but no one notable ever gets hit (well Dick got hit at the end of one chapter, but by the next chapter he was miraculously healed). Additionally, there is no lack of car, boat, airplane, and zeppelin crashes.I really did have a good time with this serial. I gave it an 8 because it had decent stories along with some better-than-average effects. Old movie fans, and anyone who likes serials, shouldn't miss this one.

wrbtu I've watched only 4-5 serials, so I don't have a lot to compare thisto, but so far it's easily the worst of the lot. The overlap fromchapter to chapter is too great (too much material repeated in thenew episode that was seen in the previous episode). The acting ispoor, especially Ralph Byrd (if he stood still for a moment, he'd beattacked by a woodpecker). The "comedy" of Smiley Burnett isnothing to smile about (he's even worse here than in the GeneAutry movies). The character with the most brains in this serial isactually the 12 year old kid, played by Lee Van Atta. And perhapsmost of all, has anybody seen Dick Tracy in this film? I must havemissed him, because no one in this movie even remotelyresembled the comic strip character. Low budget is not enough ofan excuse for low tech here. At least the director could have put awatch on Ralph Byrd's wrist, & pretended it was radio controlled.The two low budget jungle serials I watched with Phyllis Coates("Panther Girl of the Congo" & "Jungle Drums of Africa") were waybetter than this, & so was a low budget jungle serial with ClydeBeatty ("Lost Jungle"). Not that those were great serials, but theywere better than this one, so tells you something about Dick Tracy.If you'd like to watch a better crime serial, I recommend "The GreenArcher." That & the serial I'm in the middle of now, "CaptainMarvel," are far superior to Dick Tracy. I rate it 3/10.