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.

AudioFileZ If you want to go back to the "swingin' sixties" with a nod to 40's film noir this is your flick. Stylish, but already out of date is Tony Rome's nom de plume. Sinatra in a "vehicle" movie where it's his still formidable draw and the backdrop of a "cool" Miami is simply entertaining.A pre-cursor to the crusty not quite "over-the-hill" still cool private eye Tony Rome is a crime romp. Rome living close to the bone on a boat speaks volumes as to what this character is about. Since he couldn't quite fit into the department he's found his niche. And that niche is swinging with lovely ladies (Jill St. John is as good "window dressing" as ever captured on celluloid) and the grift that occurs between the have and have nots. With a pseudo complicated (i.e. simple) crime story Rome gets neck-deep in it as his ex-partner, now a lower-class hotel dick, pays his to return a socialite guest that passed out while missing. Complications and more than a few dead bodies ensue.Casting is excellent, the back-drop of Miami still in it's first hipster incarnation, and Sinatra all combine for a good time if not strapped on to a very compelling drama.

MartinHafer This is an interesting and very modern detective film. Frank Sinatra plays the title role--a private detective who seems very cool and disaffected. Of the three detective shows he made in the late 60s, I'd rate this one #2--behind the superior film "The Detective". However, this exceptional film is not related to "Tony Rome" or its sequel "The Lady in Cement". Regardless, Sinatra's world-weary performances were excellent--even if he seemed to try to make it look like he's not trying.The film begins with Tony doing what seems like a very mundane and not at all dangerous task--bringing home a drunk young lady to her rich daddy (Simon Oakland). Oddly, however, this good deed ended up leading to an apparently minor task--to find the young lady's missing earring. And, this task led to murder...in fact, a LOT of murders and mayhem. By late 60s standards, this film is awfully violent and Tony isn't exactly always the macho hero. Although he generally gets the best of it, he, too, gets the crap knocked out of him a few times in this rough and tumble film.As I said, I preferred Sinatra's "The Detective", but not by much. "Tony Rome" is a very good private eye film--a bit like a grittier version of "The Rockford Files"...minus most of the laughs. It's also odd that Tony is NOT the perfect manly sort of hero--especially since he repeatedly shows a stronger desire to wrap up the case than unwrap the very alluring Jill St. John--who spends much of the movie pursuing Tony. A very good film--especially since the mystery turns out to be a very interesting one. Worth your time.By the way, a couple interesting parts in the film are a cameo by the ex-champ Rocky Graziano as well as a VERY unusual sort of role for the comic Shecky Greene. Also, I just loved Tony's line "This is not a family. Just a bunch of people living at the same address." Priceless and indicative of the sort of smart-allecky stuff he tosses about during the film.

chaosHD The detective genre experienced a brief comeback after the success of the movie Harper in 1966, a movie that Frank Sinatra passed on. But after seeing his buddy Dean Martin having success with his Matt Helm series, Sinatra decided to do Tony Rome in hopes that it would be the first in a series as well. Tony Rome is very similar to Harper in plot and tone, leading me to assume that Sinatra must of regretted not doing Harper after all.Harper was a flawed but entertaining film, Tony Rome is also flawed but not as entertaining, mainly due to the fairly uninteresting plot, not the actors. The actors are all game. The actresses aren't given a whole lot to do, other than sit and be window dressing. Jill St. John has some amusing scenes, but Gena Rowlands and Sue Lyon are wasted. Sinatra and the director Gordon Douglas had already worked together before, on the Rat Pack film Robin and the 7 Hoods in 1964. And after doing Tony Rome they would quickly follow that up with The Detective and Lady in Cement in 1968, which are also flawed but watchable.