Customer Reviews

Tony Rome

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first in two films featuring Sinatra as the title detective, "Tony Rome" is about as hardboiled as the 60's would allow with witty dialog and strong performances from a veteran cast. Sinatra's delightfully cynical performance as Rome and a couple of twisted performances by Gena Rowlands and Simon Oakland keep this film interesting. Rome is called in by his ex-partner to return the daughter of a wealthy businessman (Simon Oakland) found passed out in a seedy hotel room. When Rome's ex-partner is found dead and the girl's diamond pin is found missing, Rome finds himself hip deep in the middle of a new unwelcome mystery to solve. Rome meets and romances the wealthy and cynical Anne Archer (Jill St. John) and he must figure out if she figures in the mystery as well.

I detected no digital flaws. A very sharp, nice transfer "Tony Rome" looks really good on DVD with some minor analog flaws that crop up from time to time in the form of film splotches found, no doubt, on the original negative. The mono sound comes across with nice presence and the dialog is crisp and clear throughout.

We get trailers for a variety of Fox films from the 1960's. My favorite is for one horror of the 60's "Fathom" and a interesting formula western "Bandolero!" both featuring Raquel Welch. The latter film is memorable for Jimmy Stewart and Dean Martin who appear as brothers(!) in the film. There's also Raquel Welch in the "Fantastic Voyage" and other interesting trailers.

A solid, fun mystery with a memorable cynical performance by Sinatra, "Tony Rome" still packs a punch. It's a great 60's detective flick and overcomes its dated trappings with a smart, witty script.

Frank Sinatra is Tony Rome, an ex-cop turned private eye, who makes his home aboard a boat, in sunny Miami. Cynical, semi-tough, and a wise cracking gambler, a call from his ex-partner, draws him into a case revolving around the troubled family affairs of influential businessman Rudy Kosterman (Simon Oakland). His daughter Diana, (Sue Lyon) has a habit of passing out in strange places. Rome's search for Diana's missing diamond pin, leads to a twisting tale of intrigue, deception and death.

We get a glimpse at the dark side of Miami, as we follow Rome on the case. Sinatra pulls it off pretty well, without being too cute. The plot is not predictable, and requires that you pay attention. Violent at times, but not gratuitously so.

Gena Rowlands appears as Klosterman's wife. Jill St. John looks good, but her performance never rings true. Ex-boxer Rocky Graziano makes a cameo, and Deanna Lund, from TV's Land of the Giants, also briefly appears. Billy May's musical score sounds like it was lifted from the 60's TV series, Batman. And Frank's daughter Nancy, sings Lee Hazelwood's corny title song to the movie.

A good piece from the period, that doesn't stray too far from reality or sink into excess. Worth seeing for the story. Sinatra would reprise his role as Tony Rome for a sequel, "Lady In Cement".

Not as bright and crisp as Lady In Cement but a delight all the same. Frank Sinatra plays Tony Rome with a touch of down at the heels class. Jill St John takes lines that would be cheesy in the hands of a less capable actress and makes them ring with humor and mirth. It's a toss up who gets the best line: Sinatra's "Oh I'll have some of that." or St John's "Slut?" It won't educate you or lift your moral fiber but it's a great popcorn movie. (Home viewers may find that some other sort of diversion comes to mind after the fifth or sixth "Malcom . . .")
Thirty years and counting and this one hasn't lost any of its appeal.

TONY ROME, if you had noticed, is not a Republic Pictures B detective movie. It's up a grade or two with a dashing good script and . . . WHAT a cast! Sinatra joins a well known crowd of movie detectives; the Marlowes, etal. as he sleuths for assorted clients. Well, maybe not in Charlie Chan's class, a gumshoe who never laid a bookie bet as Tony Rome often does. The suspect end of the plot is loaded with decoys, but at the end everyting is sorted out, the crime is resolved and the criminals are either dead or . . . well, best to see TONY ROME to find out. You just can't help enjoying Sinatra's laid back style. Yeh! I think younger folks could handle this film. The language is unsmutty. The sex is rather subtle and nothing naughty goes on in the back seat of Sinatra's Ford-bulls-eye-tail-lites convertible The violence is certainly minimal by today's standards. For example, my wife at the finish asked, "Has he killed only three people?" Actually, I counted about five. TONY ROME is an excellent B+++++ movie that doesn't lag a moment . . . even in the mushy scenes and there ain't that much smoochin' anyway.

I read many westerns, and your immediate question may be: what do westerns have to do with Tony Rome?

Well, the same author who has written many of my western paperbacks, is none other than Marvin Albert. And since Mr. Albert writes mysteries too, it comes as no surprise that he wrote all the Tony Rome mysteries from which these films were made. The two Tony Rome mystery books are: Miami Mayhem and Lady In Cement.

I've had a copy of Tony Rome on VHS for years and have viewed it many times, now with the advent of the DVDs I will purchase both Tony Rome and Lady In Cement. The movies are just great, and for me it is Sinatra playing Sinatra, with a little room for difference, but not too much. I like Sinatra and I like Marvin Albert's writings, and I like these two films very much.

Miami background, a good looking Ford convertible, good looking Jill St. John, snazzy boats, wisecracks, adventure, among many other elements: try them and you probably will enjoy all of it, too.

Semper Fi.

There is more than a little Sinatra in this man called Tony Rome. Hard drinking, broad loving, pony betting, it's all here and it's all good. Between long drags on his Luckys, Sinatra is a real man's man in the way he handles broads as well as tough guys in this one. A confirmed bachelor living on his boat, proves the ideal setting for this devil-may-care private eye who shrugs off gorgeous babes as easily as he outwits the heavies trying to keep him from their secrets. Being equally quick with fists and wits allows Tony Rome to get out of dutch faster than you can say, "Hey Pal, make mine a double." If smoking, drinking, and carousing make you long for the good old days, then get this video. Oh yeah, have one for Ol' Blue Eyes and me while you watch it.

TONY ROME at the time of its release represented cutting edge "realism" that was disturbing, stimulating and refreshing. We don't see it as such now; but films in the 1960's were just beginning to bring sex more out in the open than had been before. As far as mass entertainment was concerned, sex was more suggested than shown in the previous history of movies. Think of the end of NORTH BY NORTHWEST. The culminating sex between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint was related by a visual of a speeding train running into a mountain tunnel. By the early 1960's, the James Bond movies were notorious for the "on screen sex". Only the hip went to see James Bond-the squares avoided them for fear of being labeled scum. Naturally, the "hip" numbers were never big enough to give James Bond movies the success they had-"someone" was watching them.

Nowadays movies such as DR. NO and GOLDFINGER seem innocent and almost naïve by today's standards. (I remember turning several shades of red with embarrassment when my step-father called up the local movie house manager and gave him hell after viewing ROSEMARY'S BABY there the night before.) The change was due in part to movies such as TONY ROME.

A good part of the scandal rested not only in the subject matter of TONY ROME; but also in the fact that Old Blue Eyes Frank Sinatra was blazing the trail. At first people just couldn't believe it. Sinatra was an icon of the established entertainment industry many thought should have upheld the more respectful standards. On the other hand, just as many thought that if it was OK with Frank then it was OK.

TONY ROME depicts a seedy crime story of dupes, connivers, small time crooks, pushers, hookers and blackmailers. Rome himself likes the ladies and the ladies seem to like him even more-several throw themselves at him in the course of the story but to their disappointment he is a bit choosey. (One gets the sense Rome has a great deal of experience in bedding the ladies-enough to know when some are just far more trouble than they are worth.) Tony Rome is a former cop who has seen it all who doesn't mind breaking the law for his own purposes-he is so immersed in the dirty world he works in that he is just this side of being on the "good guy" team. In this particular story, in the end he is protecting someone we normally would think deserves to be exposed and punished.

With the fact that he lives on a boat in the Miami harbor, readers of detective fiction will recognized Rome is loosed based on Dwight McDonald's Travis McGee character-an intelligent, world-weary detective who lives by his own code of right and wrong. But this is definitely Frank Sinatra's movie and so the comparisons evaporate pretty quickly. Although this was 1967 and the infamous "Summer of Love", there is little trace of the counterculture and the one scene that does exhibit it seems to be little more than an updating of a 1950's beatnik coffee house. (Brings to mind those old DRAGNET episodes where we are supposed to believe this clean-cut 30 year-old is a hippie because he's wearing sunglasses and love beads.) No this is a world Sinatra himself knew of: alcohol, bribes, showgirls, idle rich and shady petty thieves showing up as club and motel managers.

So just what is it that nearly got TONY ROME an "X" rating in 1967? Here is a short list:

* Close-ups of women's butts
* Attractive women talking candidly about guilt-free recreational sex.
* Unattractive whores who definitely do not have hearts of gold.
* A woman undressing in front of Rome and carrying out a major scene in her bra and panties.
* A seemingly mother-daughter relationship turning out to be a lesbian union complete with jealous violent arguments/lovemaking.
* Obvious jokes and one-liners about sex organs.
* An amoral approach to bigamy.
* A running joke of the amorous escapades of a newlywed couple further up the dock from Rome's boat.

Tame you say? Not for 1967. To have sex more out in the open rather than alluded to was electrifying. It is not that people didn't know about these things (Good heavens. Don't get all superior by thinking otherwise.) People did know about sex and the attitudes others had toward it and what they did. It just wasn't discussed or shown openly in polite company. Yes, it was a real part of everyday life. But, as one teacher put it to me, diarrhea is also a part of everyday life-but we don't show it either.

Well, those times are gone. TONY ROME itself stands in a long line of detective stories much like those of the 1930's and 1940's. I wouldn't call it film noir; but the elements are there. The action is lightened up with generous dashes of humor which disturbs purists of detective genre; but that's what makes it fun.

The fact that Sinatra himself was heavily rumored to have mob connections allowed him to credibly take the role as a "seen-it-all" P.I. Many complain that the character Sinatra portrays was not all that much different from himself-that it was all too easy for him. Personally, I start gazing at the ceiling every time actors wax poetic about their "craft". With very few exceptions, the character an actor portrays in one movie tends to resemble the one he plays in the next and then the next after that. I couldn't care less. The question is does it serve the story?

In this case it does. The detective genre has some pretty strict rules that make it fairly predictable in its form. The "mystery" (such as it may be) simply has to be unfolded as the plot moves along. (Take note that in the MALTESE FALCON we never do find out who murdered Bogart's partner.) The real enjoyment is: are we entertained by the characters? Do we enjoy how they play off each other? Is the world we are shown interesting? Are we delighted by what the main character says (or the way he says it)? Is his thinking interesting?

At this, TONY ROME succeeds. Rome may not be all that admirable-but we grow to like and sympathize with him. As one actor remarked about another film detective, we may not approve of some of his methods, but if we are ever in trouble, deep down we hope someone like this would care enough about us to take our side.

Tony Rome is one of Sinatra's best underrated performances.


He is a Miami PI hired by a millionaire to do clean up when the rich man daughter is found in a hotel room. This turns into a dead ex partner in Rome's office.


Rome is a hardboiled detective like Phillip Marlowe or Spenser style. Rome could have been a great series for Frank, however only one sequal Lady in Cement was made...too bad. This fast paced movie was witty and slick. With Sinatra in the driver's seat, you know you are watching a winner

Bennet Pomerantz , AUDIOWORLD

Between 1962's "Manchurian Candidate" and 1967 when Sinatra shot "Tony Rome" in Miami, the world's greatest pop singer made some of the worst films in movie history (Marriage On The Rocks, 4 For Texas, Assault on A Queen et al); he somewhat redeemed himself playing Dade County's toughest gumshoe--Anthony Rome--
(it's worth noting the "Rome" was filmed smack in between the infamous brawl in Beverly Hills and the missing teeth fracas in Las Vegas).

"Tony Rome" is flavored with enough in jokes to make any Sinatra fan smile--Frank sleeping in his office underneath a copy of the Jewish Daily Forward; confronting a lady who needs help finding her "lost pussy"...telling a lady elevator operator "nice ride" andoverhearing a honeymoon couple making love to the music of Randy Newman's "Something Here Inside Me"!

Sinatra gives just about everyone in his inner circle cameo roles--from Mickey Rudin To Jilly Rizzo to "Prince" Mike Romanoff--what can you say about a film in which the finest supporting performance is given by Sheckey Green (who always claimed that Frank's bodyguards assaulted him up during the filming--(he does appear in one scene with his head bandaged).

Multiple viewings of "Tony Rome" always leaves one asking "Who else but Sinatra could run around that 95 degree Miami heat in a black suit and hat and not shed a drop of perspiration?!".
*****************************
Note: The Fox DVD issue (as well as The DVD issues of "Lady In Cement" and "The Detective") skimps dramatically on the special features--there a few trailers and tv spots and coming attractions for the Raquel Welch movie "Fathom", a film so bad it made "Assault On A Queen" look like "On The Waterfront"

This stylish mystery has the best of the nascent "new" Hollywood, made about the same time as The Graduate, Easy Rider, when the more "realistic" film was in demand, the outsider managing to buck the system and emerge the hero.

Here Sinatra is a tough guy, alright, but he admits he's "out of shape", he out of money, out of luck with the broads. An old school Detective, haunted by the violent demise of his idol, his Dad, also with Law Enforcement. He's happy to squeak by, in his run down 1940s styled office in downtown Miami, and maintaining his boat which mostly stays moored to the dock. But he takes on a case involving a millionaire's daughter, missing diamonds, blackmail and bigamy.

Alot of plot, as you can imagine, but the Sinatra-isms keep you interested - several cameos add an olive or two to the martini: Joe E. Ross, Rocky Graziano, Beau Jack. Gena Rowlands does a fine job as the unsettled second wife with a past, now married to the wealthy Industrialist, Koperman (Simon Oakland).

Sexy ladies include Jill St. John, Sue Lyon, and Deanna Lund (from "Land Of The Giants" and a Jerry Lewis movie).

Music is also notworthy, by Nancy Sinatra, Randy Newman. Frank sticks to the drama.

Speaking of Sinatra-isms, this one seems to have gotten past alot of people (possibly more than the all-too-quick cameo by the great boxer Beau Jack): Tony finds a hovel run by a drug dealor, where he lies in wait for a main adversary. The doorbell rings, Rome pulls out his gun, and motions to the dealor to act natural - he says "We'll do it my way. Okay?".

(Some period stereotyping).