Frank Sinatra's film career is fairly easily compartmentalized; the forties musicals in which he was expected merely to sing and play shy; a handful of 'serious' roles in the fifties and sixties in which he revealed what a fine actor he actually was when he put his mind to it and the self-indulgent years in the sixties when he just enjoyed himself on screen with or without the Rat Pack. Gordon Douglas directed Sinatra five times beginning with Young At Heart in 1954, by far the best of the five inasmuch as it exploited Sinatra's two strengths, Singing and Acting. One of the other four was Robin And The Seven Hoods, in which The Rat Pack enjoyed themselves on screen and two of the other three, Tony Rome and Lady In Cement, allowed Sinatra to enjoy himself on screen without the Rat Pack but sandwiched in between Tony Rome and Lady In Cement was The Detective, arguably Sinatra's last half-decent film (though feel free to nominate Dirty Dingus Magee or The First Deadly Sin). For ninety five per cent of the time Sinatra puts his mind to acting, losing himself in a character and there are only fleeting moments - the look/grin he gives Al Freeman in the opening sequence when Freeman says 'I hear you're the best detective in town - when he reverts to 'being' Sinatra. Horace McMahon must have felt he was caught in a time-warp, having played the same role, captain of detectives, in William Wyler's Detective Story back in 1951, but he offers solid support as do Ralph Meeker, Robert Duvall and Jack Klugman. Lee Remick is as good as she always was but Jacqueline Bisset seems ill at ease in a largely colourless role. It was probably outspoken for its time but we look back in irony forty years on as the same corruption Joe Leland was seeking to expose and eliminate is still in business at the same old stand. A lifelong Sinatra fan of both his singing and acting I find this - along with The Manchurian Candidate - one of the most watchable of his 60s movies.
Review of The Detective
