Let's be realistic.

A Disappointing Continuation

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The second and last Tony Rome film "Lady In Cement" was released in 1968. Its bright colours, perky background music and slang terms (like "fuzz" and "split" etc.) are typical of the period but there are also some features which aren't. The practice of murder victims being anchored underwater in cement shoes was prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s and the movie also draws influences from the films noir of the 1940s and 1950s. For example, the sequence in which the "lady in cement" is found by Rome, strongly evokes an underwater sequence in "The Night Of The Hunter" (1955) and a character called Gronsky is identical to Moose Malloy from Raymond Chandler's "Murder My Sweet" (1944). A scene in which Frank Sinatra gazes at a large portrait of Raquel Welch's character is also a conscious replication of a motif which was frequently seen in the noirs of the 40s and 50s.In this movie, Tony Rome is a typical noir private detective working on a missing person case that involves murder and gangsters but also shows certain characteristics of James Bond (e.g. fighting off a shark, being surrounded by semi-clad young ladies etc.). The incongruities highlighted above could be regarded as disconcerting but in this movie seem to have been used purely for laughs.Private eye Tony Rome (Frank Sinatra) is scuba-diving somewhere off the Miami coast at a location where some Spanish treasure had reputedly been lost many years earlier when he sees the nude corpse of a blonde woman whose feet had been set in cement. Shortly after reporting the incident to the coastguard, he gets approached by a hulk of a man called Waldo Gronsky (Dan Blocker) who hires him to find his lost girlfriend, Sandra Lomax. Rome's investigations take him to the go-go bar where Sandra used to work as a dancer and he speaks to her roommate and gets a hostile reception from the camp owner Danny Yale (Frank Raiter) and his bartender boyfriend.Having learned from her roommate that Sandra had been at a party at the home of Kit Forrest (Raquel Welch) on the night when she died, Rome goes to visit the alcoholic heiress who tells him that she can't remember much about the night in question. Shortly after, Rome has to make a quick exit after being threatened by her protective neighbour and ex-mobster, Al Mungar (Martin Gabel). After Sandra's roommate is found dead and a couple of thugs try to kill Gronsky, Rome gets into a whole series of tight spots (including being framed for the murder of Danny Yale) before he eventually brings his investigation to a successful conclusion.Despite the nature of its plot, "Lady In Cement" is essentially a light-hearted confection which enables Sinatra to indulge in numerous in-jokes and have fun with women who are half his age. He does well in conveying how jaded Rome has become and is also good at delivering some snappy one-liners. Among the supporting cast, Dan Blocker makes the strongest impression as the larger-than-life Gronsky. The emphasis in this movie is very much on the humour and judged on this basis, it clearly succeeded.

Terrible film with Frank Sinatra as Tony Rome. Here, he gets involved with a dead woman below the sea.Rome is soon hired to find out what happened to a woman. Naturally, it's the woman below the sea. Her room mate, Lainie Kazan, soon winds up dead on the floor.An aging Richard Conte plays a police officer and friend of Rome. When a local club owner gets killed, the blame falls on Rome and there becomes an interesting chase scene. That's how bad this picture is if you have to depend on a chase scene to supply the action.Raquel Welch plays the beauty up to her neck in intrigue. Her acting leads a lot to be desired. Martin Gabel is a retired hoodlum whose son is trying to outdo him.By the film's end, you don't know why the girl was murdered. Don't even bother to ask.

To begin with, though it didn't do well at the box-office and is clearly inferior to its predecessor, this isn't that bad a sequel to TONY ROME (1967). The mystery this time around is more clear-cut because it starts off with a body (the titular figure); eventually, the hero (once again played by Frank Sinatra) himself is incriminated – leading to him falling out with his cop friend Richard Conte! The female roles aren't as effective, however: Lainie Kazan makes a good impression as a go-go dancer but, despite her high billing, is restricted to just one sequence!; as for leading lady Raquel Welch, she's okay but no match for Jill St. John from the original (the script relies a bit too much on Welch's glamorous presence alone to carry the role) – and there isn't even that much chemistry between her and Sinatra! With this in mind, the star strikes up an unlikely alliance throughout with beefy and imposing Dan Blocker (from the Western TV series "Bonanza") – which gives a humorous vein to the generally hard-boiled proceedings and immediately reminds one of the Philip Marlowe/Moose Malloy partnership in MURDER, MY SWEET aka FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1944).Again, most of the suspects in the case are unsavory characters – from former mobsters (now ostensibly leading a respectable life) to homosexuals (remnants perhaps from Sinatra's previous collaboration with director Douglas, THE DETECTIVE [1968]). Incidentally, while the mystery in the original led to an unexpected revelation, the clues here point to either Welch or Blocker but – predictably – the identity of the real culprit is much more obvious; for what it's worth, the script was co-written by Marvin H. Albert, who created the Tony Rome character in the first place on the written page! Miami – in all its aspects – still acts as an alluring yet dangerous backdrop to the sex and violence going on; however, Rome even gets to fight the inhabitants of the ocean as a number of sharks are attracted to the 'lady in cement' in the opening sequence! Similarly, the bouncy score supplied by Hugo Montenegro emerges to be a definite plus. One final thing: apparently, Joe E. Lewis – the singer-turned-comedian played by none other than Sinatra in THE JOKER IS WILD (1957) – puts in an appearance here as himself!

With a few exceptions such as French Connection II sequels don't have a high strike-rate in terms of success and this is no exception. Whilst it is indisputable that Sinatra COULD act when he put his mind to it - From Here To Eternity, The Manchurian Candidate - the fact remains that he put his mind to it all too infrequently and often - The Naked Runner, The Detective - the best he would do would be to check his ring-a-ding-ding persona with the Assistant Director before walking on set.Part of the problem was that his millions of fans, including myself, would (and probably still will) watch him in anything which albeit, as in my case, not uncritically, left him free to be self-indulgent and walk through too many movies. I for one and speaking as a lifelong fan never really found him believable as a private eye in either Tony Rome or this sequel; it's just Sinatra perpetuating the image he had created since his 'comeback' as the super-cool, super-hip Jack-the-lad, ogling the girls, tossing off the one-liners and having as much of a ball as possible whilst shooting a movie more or less on time and under budget. Any movie that begins with a blatant rip-off of Farewell, My Lovely with ax extra large man (Mike Mazurski, Dan Blocker) hiring a private detective (Dick Powell, Frank Sinatra) to find the girl friend who disappeared whilst he was in the slammer is clearly struggling and the fact that it then abandons the plot developments of the Chandler story in favour of something more inept doesn't help in the least. Okay, if it's a choice between this and Mr. Bean then fine but other than that it's really just for Sinatra completists.