The First Deadly Sin

I am a huge fan of Lawrence Sanders, who wrote "The First Deadly Sin," and I finally came upon the DVD, and was excited to buy it. To me the novel gives equal time to Delaney and Daniel Blank (hey, what a name for the killer), but this film focuses on Delaney and his problems.

I envisioned an actor like Brian Dennehey playing Edward Delaney, a big man with a good heart, very intuitive, and with a big appetite for all kinds of weird sandwiches and always some good beer, not someone like Sinatra, a rather small man.

Sanders is a brilliant writer of weird characters, and Daniel Blank was one of his best. Yet the whole film seems to focus on Delaney and the dying wife.

I would have much liked to have seen the killer portrayed as he was in the book - a man with a good job, a very strange girlfriend, and brilliant in a horrible type of way.

And so slow moving! Lesson learned, never see a movie after you've read the book.

Frank Sinatra put on a pretty decent performance here (in what's billed as his last starring performance, although he was in "Cannonball Run II" a few years later) as Edward X. Delaney - a New York City police detective weeks away from retirement, who gets caught up in a murder investigation that his commanding officer (for reasons I never clearly understood) would prefer him to leave alone. Sinatra's performance, though, was really the only thing that made this movie worth watching. The story of the search for the psychopathic killer wasn't all that interesting, and while the subplot revolving around the illness of Delaney's hospital-bound wife (a rather simple role played by Faye Dunaway) took up a fair amount of screen time, it also added nothing to spark the movie, except perhaps to ground Delaney as a loving husband. Delaney does come across as a sympathetic character for the most part, although he's a cop willing to go to any lengths (legal or otherwise) to get this killer. Aside from that there was one very effective scene in which the curator Langley (Martin Gabel) goes to a hardware store trying to figure out what the murder weapon was which added some welcome comedy relief to this otherwise rather poorly structured and poorly paced movie, which I would frankly have to say was one of the least exciting and least interesting murder mysteries I've ever seen.

I saw someone else's user comments on this film and I can't believe that there were going to be series of films based on Frank Sinatra's character mainly because of the ending this film had. If you're thinking that gives the ending away, don't look for an obvious conclusion.

To his credit, I guess Frank Sinatra did not want to end his film career with Dirty Dingus Magee. He wanted to end his film with the serious part, unfortunately The First Deadly Sin messes up the telling of a potentially good tale.

Frank Sinatra is days away from his retirement as a Detective Sergeant and a strange murder has been assigned to him. A man apparently selected at random is killed with an unidentified weapon that is just driven into the top of his skull. A little good detective work and he finds their just might be a pattern of killings.

It's all in identifying the weapon and it's an unusual one at that which I won't reveal. A professor in medieval history played by Martin Gabel helps with the hunt and later on he's joined by the widow of Sinatra's victim, Brenda Vaccaro to help with the hunt.

They're helping because Sinatra's new captain is one total jerk played by Anthony Zerbe. Maybe I'm missing something in Zerbe's performance, but I would think that an ambitious guy like Zerbe plays would instead of pooh-poohing Sinatra's ideas would think that this guy if he is on to something with this serial killer business. And if he's right Zerbe will get all kinds of accolades for figuring this out in his precinct and even more if the doer is apprehended. It's an absolutely impossible role and poor Anthony Zerbe can't do much with it.

All this while Frank's wife Faye Dunaway falls ill to a misdiagnosed kidney malady. She spends all her time in the hospital and Sinatra visits her at breaks in this case.

Frank delivers a very good performance in a role similar to the one he had in The Detective. He's supported by the rest of the cast very well, except with Anthony Zerbe's impossible role. Besides who I've mentioned look for a really nice turn by Joe Spinell as the mendacious doorman where suspect David Dukes lives. His role is similarly undefined, we really never learn why he's doing these crimes.

A serial killer is hunting New York City. Grizzled veteran police detective Edward Delaney (Frank Sinatra) is investigating the case. His wife Barbara (Faye Dunaway) is in the hospital. He enlists the help of ancient arms expert Christopher Langley.

Sinatra is playing a tired cop who is distracted by his wife's illness. It does not make for a compelling investigation although it may be more accurate. It's a darker reserved performance. The more exciting character is eager Langley searching for the murder weapon in the local shops. He has a couple of hilarious scenes. Otherwise, this is grinding film about the grind of a grinding investigation. While I appreciate the personal aspect of the wife, it doesn't make it compelling as far as the investigation goes. Although it does not excuse the horrible insult of someone nominating Dunaway as the worst actress. The woman is in bed dying for most of the movie and that's what she gives. This is a bit of a grind to watch but it somehow maintains my attention for the most part.

The First Deadly Sin (1980)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Weeks from retirement, Detective Edward Delaney (Frank Sinatra) is trying to take care of his bed-ridden wife while at the same time trying to figure out who murdered a man with what appears to be an ice ax. Pretty soon it becomes clear that there's a serial killer at work and the detective must try and find out who it is even though he has no one behind him.

THE FIRST DEADLY SIN turned out to be Sinatra's final theatrical starring role and it came ten years after his previous turn in DIRTY DINGUS MAGEE. The film was originally released to rather mixed reviews and it ended up not doing too well at the box office and in all reality the thing has pretty much been forgotten in time. It's really too bad the film turned out so mediocre because with a few fine touches it really could have been something special.

As it is the film is only worth watching thanks to the excellent performance from Sinatra. The actor had played a detective in some of his late 60's films so it's clear that Sinatra was comfortable playing this type of role. It's also clear that the age of Sinatra here had him showing off a certain calm and patience that we didn't always see to him. You can really see the actor slowly working and carefully planning out the characters moves and I think it really makes for an excellent performance. The actor has such a presence on the screen that it's impossible to take your eyes off of him.

The supporting cast includes nice work from James Whitmore, Joe Spinell and Brenda Vaccaro. Faye Dunaway plays the role of the wife and in all honesty she has very little to do outside of acting sick and laying in a bed. This here is the biggest issue with the movie because whenever we flash to her hospital scenes it pretty much kills everything and the film comes to a crashing halt. What's so bad about these scenes is that there's nothing that really happens. Sinatra gives her a flow several times. They talk about the same thing (a house) and there's just nothing here that adds anything to the plot.

It also doesn't help that the direction by Brian G Hutton is so deadly dull. There's no visual style going on. There's never any tension. The movie has a very cheap feel as if it belongs on television. What's worse is that it's pretty out-of-date with the times as it seems like it should have been made a decade earlier. They just don't do anything with the material and even the killer is rather boring.

THE FIRST DEADLY SIN is worth watching because of the excellent performance by Sinatra but sadly there's not much else here.