Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Wow! Such a good movie.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

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.

Sinatra's PI, Tony Rome, shrewdly uses verbal parry and thrust instead of muscle to clear things up. It's a showcase for the actor, without a tuneful song in sight. Plot-wise he's got to figure out where an expensive diamond pin went and where the heck bad guy Nimmo is. Along the way, there's a lot of scenic Miami Beach and bikini clad skin, mainly Jill St. John's. But what grabbed me was the innuendo, intentional or not. Catch the brief scene with Mrs. Schuyler and her repetition of a lost pussy. That exchange with Rome is simply dropped in, and has nothing to do with the plot. Perhaps it was included on a dare. Tellingly, there're other, albeit passing, innuendos, as well. After all, this was a period when the counter-culture was taking hold and the repressive Production Code was all but dead.It's also a good chance to catch a number of Hollywood vets in supporting roles, especially noir icon Richard Conte as a cop. All in all, it's a smoothly done (Gordon Douglas) eye- catcher. Moreover, the high-key Technicolor is about as far from classic gumshoe noir as possible. Happily for Sinatra the actor, it's a restrained showcase. Just bring your note pad to keep up with the tricky plot.

All three principals - Writer, Director, Actor - had turned out far superior stuff to this and I speak as someone who bows to no one in my admiration for Richard L. Breen's Pete Kelly's Blues and A Foreign Affair (co-written with Billy Wilder), Gordon Douglas' Young At Heart and Frank Sinatra's entire career. Journeyman director Gordon Douglas worked with Sinatra on three movies besides this one; the sequel, Lady In Cement, Robin And The Seven Hoods and the aforementioned Young At Heart. He also shot the remake of Stagecoach, Only The Valiant, and a forgotten film in which Jimmy Cagney played an alkie, Come Fill The Cup, all good solid jobs without being exceptional. In the wake of Bill Goldman's screenplay for Paul Newman, Harper, the private eye genre became a drug on the market in the 60s and if Tony Rome is no worse than most neither is it any better. It's the kind of part that Sinatra could phone in while lighting a cigarette and cutting an album and there are too many strands that if developed sufficiently - like Sinatra's relationship with Richard Conte's working cop - might have lifted it out of the rut. It passes a hundred minutes more or less painlessly but that's the best you can give it.

Frank Sinatra does his best to bring the tough talking, hard drinking, womanizing detectives of the 1940s into the 1960s. Sinatra plays detective Tony Rome much like I would image Bogart would have had he been alive. Sinatra doesn't do much of anything that Bogart wasn't doing when he played either Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. In fact, beyond the characters, there are other similarities. Much as Bogart had his falcon, Rome has his diamond stickpin. And just as Bogart was forever carrying Carmen Sternwood home after one too many, Rome seems to be always at hand to make sure the Kosterman daughter gets home safely. In a way, it's this familiarity that makes me enjoy Tony Rome more than I probably should. Realistically, I've probably overrated the movie. You're not going to find anything award worthy here and Sinatra is doing little more than playing Sinatra. But it is fun and I always have a good time watching it. The mystery surrounding the stickpin keeps my attention even after having seen the movie three times. And what more can you really ask of a movie. Other highlights for me beyond the plot include some really cool scenes of Miami in the 60s and Jill St. John in a bikini.