DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME (1947) **1/2 Ok, guess which one Boris Karloff is. There's truth in typecasting, even when it's only visual. Ralph Byrd still strikes me as too average (and normal) to be the premier homicide detective, but he and Anne Gwynne make a great aging middle class boyfriend and girlfriend set. Always working to make things better without resort to philosophy or politics, fearless, kind, attractive and appealing. The gangsters and their patsies are well-portrayed, too, their motivation obvious and personalities invariably missing some elemental component. So the characters are impressive, the plot credible if extreme, and the action and locations feel down and dirty like they should. It's really not a bad portrayal of crime and punishment. The closing shot is perfect. There are different magnitudes of perfection, of course, and I wouldn't compare the sequence to the baptism in The Godfather or something, but...you know, it's only the stratagems on both sides of the law that are cartoon-like. And they have to be, or we'd have to take the whole thing entirely too seriously, at which point it would be less entertaining.
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