VeteranLight
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
ChanFamous
I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.
Lachlan Coulson
This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.
HotToastyRag
I watched this movie with my brother when we were in high school, and we couldn't stop laughing. It's pretty much a non-stop joke fest about sex, body parts, prostitution, and more sex. Back in the sixties, it was pretty wild to be able to make those jokes, since the previous three decades were ruled by the Hays Code censorship. Nowadays, these jokes might only be funny to teenagers, or teenagers at heart.Frank Sinatra plays, well, Frank Sinatra. He has a revolving door of good looking broads, shoots bad guys, parties, and hangs out at strip clubs. His character in the film is slightly different, as he's a private detective and lives on a houseboat in Miami Beach, but I guess if Tony Rome had taken place in Las Vegas, it would have felt too much like a documentary. The three main broads are Jill St. John, Gena Rowlands, and Sue Lyon, but there's a buffet of babes in bikinis and lingerie if you're watching the movie for the eye candy.The detective-theft part of the plot isn't particularly extraordinary, but is anyone really watching it for that? No, we want to watch Frank Sinatra juggle scantily-clad babes and crack sex jokes. And we'll be very happy.
bcstoneb444
One could make a case that 'Tony Rome' is the best private eye movie of the 1960s. Also we could argue that it's the first neo-noir, depending how one defines these things. In any case a lot of the film's success can be attributed to Sinatra, who is just terrific. The Tony Rome persona is clearly in the tradition of the classic private detective. However, Sinatra gives the character a more laid back, hip quality than the usual Old School tough detectives we saw in the 1940s, played by the likes of Bogart, Mitchum and Dick Powell. Given the setting and lifestyle, the character of Rome is also an obvious first cousin to Travis McGee of the John D. MacDonald novels. Moreover, in its way the film anticipates Miami Vice of two decades later. The style and mood is more early than late 60s, and there is a whiff of 007 with the lush Miami Beach backdrop, zingy repartee, frequent consumption of alcohol, top-notch production values, and beautiful women. And like the Bond films of that era, some of the sensibilities are, by today's standards, decidedly un-pc. To wit: Rome's penchant for violence, to the point of sadism; and the depiction of most of the women characters as little more than sex objects. Still, the film provides a good time capsule-like view of what Miami Beach was like a half century ago. Perhaps the best thing about TR is the cast of quirky secondary characters, played to perfection by the fine supporting cast. Refreshing to see Richard Conte as a cop instead of a mobster. And Jill St. John makes for a fetching (semi)romantic interest for Rome. There's not much that's new in 'Tony Rome,' but there's not a lot that's wrong with it either.
kapelusznik18
****SPOILERS**** Frank Sinatra in his first of two "Tony Rome" movies is Miami PI Tony Rome who's gambling addiction has him taking on any case that comes to him. Even tracking down the reason why a ladies cat, or pussy as she calls it, has been acting strangely as of late and not eating her "Puss & Boots" dinners or drinking her milk as well as hiding in the closet and not coming out to greet her. It's when Tony is called by his friend hotel detective Ralph Turpin,Robert J. Wilks, to clear up a problem that he's facing with a drunk and out of it teen Diana Pines, Sue Lyon, being found laid out and smashed in his hotel that his trouble really begins.It turns out that Diana is the daughter of Miami construction mogul Rudy Kosterman,Simon Oakland, who wants to keep her name out of the news and is willing to pay him any amount of cash to do it! What really complicate all this is that Diana had a diamond pin on that turned out to be missing and if found and tried to be converted to cash it would be discovered that it's in fact fake! And the reason for that is that both Diana and her step-mom Mrs. Rita Kosterman, Gena Rowlands, have been switching the diamonds in Rudy's wall safe with fake jewelry! In Diana's case to pay off her real mom Lorna, Jeanne Cooper, a drunk and falling down on her face alcoholic's bar tab and as for Rita, Diana's step mother, to pay off her 1st husband a guy called Nimmo in preventing him from blackmailing her with the fact that she's still legally married to him.***SPOILERS*** Toney gets worked over a number of times in the movie and ends up gunning down a couple of those that worked him over before he gets to the bottom of the case with the help of shapely and sexy red head Ann Archer, Jill St. John, who's just along for the ride: On Tony's houseboat the "Straight Pass". Frank Sinatra is no Hurphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum but good enough as a down and out on his luck PI to be effective but his action scenes, with him slugging and shooting it out with the bad guys, are anything but convincing. Still his wise cracking and having women swoon over him even though he has nothing financially, on him living on the balls of his a**, to offer them hits the spot or is on target far more then his firsts do in all the action scenes that he's in.
MARIO GAUCI
I'd watched this one before in a pan-and-scan version on Cable TV, but had lost the sequel – LADY IN CEMENT (1968) – a number of times on Italian TV; recently, I acquired both in anticipation of the 10th anniversary from the death of their leading man – Frank Sinatra. TONY ROME was one of a number of films which, during the late 1960s, attempted to revive the private eye subgenre which was a staple of the Noir style prevalent from the early 1940s through the late 1950s. Others in this vein included HARPER (1966) and MARLOWE (1969); this kept on steadily till the late 1970s and, in fact, the whole movement acquired new resonance with the Watergate political scandal (reaching an apotheosis with CHINATOWN [1974]).Anyway, to get back to the film proper: with its serpentine plot and roster of suspects spread equally between the idle rich and small-time losers, TONY ROME plays almost like an updated version of THE BIG SLEEP (1946); the fact that it works at all is due to the coming together of various elements. While the mystery as it evolves isn't particularly compelling, it's ultimately justified – or, if you like, redeemed – by the climactic revelation; besides, it features reasonably good dialogue, evocative Miami locales that are a heady brew of glamor and sleaze, several fashionably violent set-pieces, and ideal casting all around.Sinatra – who, on paper, might seem as unlikely in this mould as John Wayne would prove to be in the following decade – brings his undeniable presence and vast experience to the role of the tough and cynical ex-cop/investigator/skipper. In his line of work, he comes into contact with all sorts of people: from classy dames (such as Jill St. John, Gena Rowlands and Sue Lyon – all with their individual ticks, and either disenchanted with their lifestyle or fleeing from a shady past) to two-bit strippers, a wealthy businessman (Simon Oakland), a long-suffering cop friend (Richard Conte), as well as assorted low-life individuals (including Rome's corrupt ex-partner Robert J. Wilke, proscribed doctor Jeffrey Lynn and drug-dealer Lloyd Bochner) and brutish thugs; even real-life boxing champ Rocky Graziano – portrayed by Paul Newman in SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME (1956) – puts in an appearance as a dockside peddler.We even get a nice title tune sung by the star's own daughter, Nancy Sinatra – though it seems odd to listen to her praising the amoral nature of his character! Incidentally, director Douglas would helm three consecutive thrillers with Sinatra in the lead (twice appearing in the role of Tony Rome) – even if the best among them remains the other (more serious) effort, THE DETECTIVE (1968). Later still, Sinatra went down these same dark streets again in the made-for-TV movie CONTRACT ON CHERRY STREET (1977) and, in his very last starring vehicle, THE FIRST DEADLY SIN (1980).
