Tony Rome

The guy Sinatra is looking for throughout the film is named Nimmo. I just couldn't let that go by without comment. This is good light entertainment. Florida in the 1960's is not bad to look at. A few good laughs thrown in. All in all not a bad flick. Ms. Rowlands looked incredible. Almost Grace Kelly good looking. St. John was good. Conte was good. Simon Oakland did his usual great job. Oakland must have been working somewhere every day of the 60's and 70's. And Frank was Frank.

Sure, it doesn't have a great plot line and there are more holes than a B-17 flying back from the ball bearing plant in Germany, but it is fun!It is as about as politically correct as a Klan meeting, and that is part of its charm. By 1967, Sinatra was already a magnificent anachronism. His world of of "ring a ding,ding",and "broads", martinis and captain's hats were longer hip or remotely cool. He still keeps trying, however. Just four years before, with Kennedy still in office, Tony Rome would have seemed like "Mr. Hip"', Daddio. By 1967, the glory days of the Rat Pack were over, the Beatles had taken over America along with their countrymen, we were deeply involved in Vietnam, American cities were burning, and drugs were everywhere. Timothy Leary was now cool to an entire generation of young Americans. Still,Sinatra is Sinatra. I am awfully glad he didn't pull up in a flower power VW Beetle, wearing long beads and a Nehru jacket.It must of been galling to him that he was no longer the hippest thing on two feet, however. His reaction seems to be to ignore the entire subculture. " Just a bunch of kids!".

Anyway, this is a fun movie! Shecky Greene, a former Sinatra favorite and later an outcast, is a bad guy. Richard Conte, a Sinatra pal, plays his pal in the movie.Rocky Graziano is in it. And let's not forget one of the all time babes, Jill St. John. They could have forgotten the plot and had her steal bikinis all day, by trying them on and wearing them out of the store. Normally I would rate this movie a four or a five, just based on the acting on the script. It gets two extra points for Jill St. John's bathing suit!

This is one breezy film. Sinatra one lines himself solidly throughout. In films like this, there aren't many moments of reflection. This saves us the trouble of examining the plot and the character motivation too intently. The benefit to the viewer is that the whole experience remains visceral and on the surface. On occasion I like films that don't challenge me, that simply vibrate with a peculiar sort of corrupt, smarmy, highly heated decaying fun. Sinatra dashes all over Miami in search of his maguffin. He pops in to the lives of many marginalized denizens of the underworld. He gets a taste of the lives of the newly rich and partially famous. His alter-ego, Richard Conte, provides a mundane, safe balanced universe for him to rest up in from time to time but the bulk of his characters time is spent in high risk action and lots of smart-assed talk. And for this viewer, that was just fine.

The best reason for watching this film is to use it to transport yourself back to the 1960's, and experience that period from the perspective of a 50's Rat Pack star.

This is not a great movie by today's standards, but as a child of the 60's and 70's myself, I can say that this movie does take you back to a time when America had a completely different environment, and mindset. The character portrayed by Sinatra, and the dialogue in general, presents a good example of what the typical American Male thought of as "cool" in the early 60's.

True, it's not what we find entertaining today, but that's not why I like to watch old movies. I watch old films because they have an extraordinary ability to take you to a time when the world, and people in general, had a very different view of things and also what was fashionable at that time.

If you haven't seen this don't worry it's on cable almost every week. Whenever I realize I haven't seen it in a while it comes on again. This is a really fun movie, much better then the sequel "Lady in Cement", my friend and I were really disappointed in the sequel that we couldn't wait to see. Anyway Sinatra plays a local Private Eye, sort of a Rockford Files without the trailer, Sinatra is in a houseboat. After a local rich girl ends up in a broken down motel and her pin is missing, Sinatra is hired by her father(the great Simon Oakland) to find out who stole her jewerly. This was filmed on location so you really get to see 1960's Miami, it's fun just for that. Gena Rowlands stars as Oaklands wife, Jeannie Cooper the soap star is married to Gena's ex, Joe E. Lewis of Car 54 fame is a bartender and it also includes a lot of other 1960s character actor regulars(watch for Joan Shawlee as "Fat Candy", she was one of my favorites in "The Apartment", the girl Jack Lemmon spends christmas eve in a bar with. Keep an eye on AMC or TCM, they seem to run it the most