Starring Frank Sinatra, Gena Rowlands, Jill St. John, Sue Lyon, Richard Conte

(5-Okay Film)

Hackneyed. Moderate. Entertaining.

Frank Sinatra plays former cop, private detective Anthony Rome, who gets sucked into a jewelry theft turned homicide by his former partner. Working for a wild young heiress to retrieve some missing diamonds leads to a world of pimps, strippers, abortionists, and blackmailers. It also leads to Ann Archer (played by Jill St. John, who went on to play a Bond Girl in Diamonds are Forever). Tony Rome is textbook private detective stuff- your seedy customers, femme fatales, easy case turned complex-but I like that stuff. Still, the film is in need of some fresh perspective or material. Similar to my qualms with Harper (1966) or Marlowe (1969), the sixties counter-culture era doesn’t lend itself to effective noir. The aesthetics are wrong in my opinion.  This being said, the film is an easygoing, uncomplicated neo-noir and a solid star vehicle for Sinatra.

-Walter Tyrone Howard-

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