FuzzyTagz
If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Merolliv
I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.
InformationRap
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Tyreece Hulme
One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.
AudioFileZ
O.K., Tony doesn't die, but this film killed an otherwise promising franchise. While the original, Tony Rome, wasn't a monumental piece of film-making this one fell flat at the box office.Lovable loser Tony Rome is back. He's still cool in his deadbeat style, but this time he's on a case that just doesn't gel. Revisiting the ingredients that made the original a fun romp falls flat this time as the story just hasn't got legs. It starts off startling enough with the underwater discovery of a nude (torso up) blonde on the bottom of the sea. The story could have gone any number of ways from here, but the direction it took - mobster gone straight and jealousy among lovers, including bashing gays, seems mis-placed to be kind.The high points here include good turns by Raquel Welsh and Dan Blocher. As a character actor Blocher really lights up the screen. His presence is formidable and begs for more screen time. Raquel Welsh is fantastic window dressing, if not quite as effective as Jill St. John in Tony Rome. Sinatra is totally relaxed and rolling nicely with the character. Blame the writers and the screenplay because with the cool backdrop of Miami Beach and the straight man role reprised of homicide chief Richard Conti this could have extended Tony Rome into at least another two or three films. It didn't, however, and this is still worth a watch if not very compelling.
Prof-Hieronymos-Grost
Detective Tony Rome (Frank Sinatra) returns to the screen after his self titled debut, this time it's a film that's played for erm
laughs. While on a diving trip, Rome finds the body of a blonde beauty at the bottom of the sea, her feet as you might expect, encased in cement. Rome immediately on the case after being hired by man mountain Waldo Gronsky. Rome finds himself immediately at risk as he has to investigate some mafia types, who turn the tables on him and he is himself found to be the main suspect, he must now go on the run and hope to solve the case alone. The portly Sinatra tries hard to sell us the lame jokes and make us believe he is a good detective, oh and not to mention being sexually attractive to the foxy Raquel Welch, but he fails miserably, in this ham fisted vanity project. The frankly laughable denouement that surrounds every female is quite astounding, every woman in the film is a dither head, who likes bending over is front of the camera, Director Douglas of course obliges in zooming in on the cracks of their asses each time as they flex their posterior muscles. There's even a ridiculously campy gay character that beggars belief, this was a film made by "real men" for "real men" to reaffirm their own flagging sexuality, it's a shameful shambles.
Dave from Ottawa
If you can buy the idea that a balding, pudgy 50ish perpetually broke private eye who looks a bit like Frank Sinatra can still get the ladies, then the other logical shortcomings here are tolerable. Sinatra is a pro and gives an assured performance, but the rest of the movie is pretty routine 1960s vintage murder mystery stuff. A beautiful woman is found dead. The cops hassle the private eye to see what he knows. The private eye starts poking around and stirs up a hornet's nest of suspects and motives. That sort of thing. The style is perfunctory, and rather notably non-psychedelic for the mid-1960s, and there is nothing unusual about the storyline. This sort of hard boiled P.I. stuff was all over the place then. Still, the Florida setting is well used to create a look of decadent glamor and if you like this sort of thing, it's an okay time-passer.
bensonmum2
If you take a look at what I wrote about Tony Rome a couple of years ago, you can apply a lot of it to Lady in Cement. Once again, this is a movie that I probably enjoy more than I should. That's because for the most part, it entertains me. Plot details hardly matter as the whole thing is little more than a vehicle for Frank Sinatra to show his supposed coolness. I'll just say that Lady in Cement is well paced with very few dull moments. Other than a handful of really seedy looking locations, it's a harmless enough way to spend an hour and a half. To be as light as much of it is, however, there are a few nice twists and turns along the way. In fact, the identity of one of the killers really caught me off-guard. Sinatra may be the "star", but he's not the attraction here for me. Instead, Dan Blocker and Raquel Welch are the films highlights and in two very different ways. Blocker is very entertaining as the huge behemoth of a man, Waldo Gronsky. And Raquel is equally entertaining in her own way as wealthy socialite Kit Forrest. Finally, as with Tony Rome, I get a real kick out of the shots of a mid-60s Miami. Forty years later it looks almost like a foreign country. I suppose the thing that bothers me the most about Lady in Cement is the amount of lame comedy found in the script (although the scene with Blocker watching Bonanza on television made me laugh out loud for some reason). You'll find comedy in Tony Rome, but I don't remember this much. The worst is the over-the-top gay-bating that Sinatra tries to use as humor. It has a terribly dated feel to it and, as some would argue, is quite offensive.