Dick Tracy (1990)

Amsterdam was a gamble. David O. Russell is a talented filmmaker, but he rarely brings in big box office numbers. The camera moves effectively in the film and the set design combined with the visual effects make for a beautifully accurate rendering of 1930s New York City. He also packed the movie with a star-studded cast including Margot Robbie, Christian Bale, and Taylor Swift. But nothing could save the fate of this long-delayed production. 

According to IMDB, the film cost $80 million, but only had a domestic return of roughly $15 million dollars.  New Regency financed the film and is expected to lose $100 million on the project.  Much of this is because the movie suffered from production delays due to COVID, with filming moved from Boston to Los Angeles due to pandemic concerns.  This relocation jacked up the movie’s budget by $30 million dollars alone.

“A lot of this really happened” reads the text at the start of the film.  A similar line appears at the beginning of Russell’s American Hustle.  Russell is preparing his audience for something outrageous or a story that’s too zany to be true.  It’s a great and tantalizing way to reel in the viewer whether the movie delivers or not.  

The film follows three friends: Burt Berendsen(Christian Bale), Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), and Harold Woodsman (John David Washington), who form a close bond in Amsterdam in the late 1910s.  Burt and Harold are World War I soldiers injured in battle.  Valerie is the nurse that tended to them.  We fast forward to New York in the early 1930s.  Burt is a doctor while Harold is a lawyer.  Neither has seen Valerie since their time abroad.  Harold asks Burt to perform an autopsy on their recently deceased former commander Bill Meekins.  Meekins’ daughter Elizabeth, played by Taylor Swift, believes her father was murdered.  During the examination, Harold discovers poison in Meekins' system.  Harold and Burt go to Elizabeth to share their findings.  It is during this encounter that Elizabeth gets pushed into the street, run over by a car and killed.  Harold and Burt are framed for the murder and flee the scene.  

In their quest to prove their innocence and uncover the murder plot, Harold and Burt meet with Tom Voze (Rami Malek) who is in fact Valerie’s brother.  Valerie is under the care of Tom for an apparent nervous condition.