The Detective

Frank Sinatra gives a gritty performance in the crime thriller The Detective. When Teddy Leikman, the homosexual son of a politically connected department-store magnate, is murdered, detective Joe Leland (Frank Sinatra) is sent in to investigate. Leland drags in Teddy's psychotic former roommate ...more

A lurid, jumbled storyline and a Frank Sinatra-on-autopilot performance are major setbacks for this ambitious -- if reactionary -- late-'60s crime thriller. Though it predates the notorious Cruising by more than a decade, The Detective peppers its plot with the grisly particulars of a murder of a young, prominent gay man in Manhattan. As if flinching from the initially shocking material, screenwriter Abby Mann (adapting Roderick Thorp's bestseller) then delves into a lengthy, confusing flashback ...more