The Rat Pack

There’s a problem that befalls most biographical movies: in most cases, the subject of the biography was such a personality in life, that no matter how good the actor playing him, the performance comes across as the actor doing an impression of the subject. Such is the case of this movie, although thankfully, Liotta does not try to mimic Sinatra’s signature voice.

The story itself is a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the life of Frank Sinatra and the events surrounding John Kennedy’s election to office. The script does a good job of covering a lot of ground in a short time, although a longer movie would have felt better. Since this was made for the HBO cable channel, the budget was less than the average motion picture and while it does show in some scenes, the movie doesn’t suffer too much from it.

Martin Scorsese has long talked about doing a Dean Martin biography and, after seeing this, I’m certain it would be fascinating. However, I’m equally sure no one could play Dino.

This is a great story that, unfortunately, could only really be told by the men that lived it.