Dick Tracy

Round 9: "Dick Tracy" (1990) vs. "The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle" (2000)

Never let it be said that these two serious actors don't have a silly side. De Niro has occasionally turned in a cartoonish performance, but this was the first time he actually played a genuine cartoon... more character: Fearless Leader, the monocle-wearing übervillain who keeps trying to capture the computer-animated "moose and squirrel." The star seems to be aware that he's stuck in a rather joyless affair, even though he still gives the part his all. But Pacino is clearly having fun with his comic-strip gangster Big Boy Caprice. He gives the nemesis of Chester Gould's square-jawed flatfoot a goofy sense of Shakespearean grandeur (The New York Times compared Pacino's criminal to a cross between "Richard III and Groucho Marx"), and his grotesque underworld kingpin is the one spark of fun in Warren Beatty's suffocatingly faithful take on the funny-pages legend. De Niro's mastermind is a lark. Pacino's ludicrous Big Boy is a movie saver.

Winner: Pacino, hands down

(Touchstone Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection)