The First Deadly Sin
Tags: suspenseful, humor, neo noir, murder, violence

Plot synopsis:
The film opens outside Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on West 81st Street in Manhattan. A man is viciously attacked by another man wielding an ice axe. The attack is intercut with graphic closeups of a woman undergoing surgery. The NYPD arrive to process the scene. The coroner, Dr. Ferguson (Whitmore), shows Detective Edward Delaney (Sinatra) that the fatal wound on the skull was made with a round object.
Meanwhile, the 20th Precinct receives news that Delaney's wife Barbara (Dunaway) is recovering from emergency surgery. The information is relayed to Delaney at the scene, and he rushes to the hospital. Barbara's surgeon, Dr. Bernardi (Coe), explains that complications from her kidney stones forced him to remove the organ. Over the course of the film, Barbara's condition worsens, and Delaney harbors deep suspicions that Bernardi is incompetent.
The murder on 81st Street is a kind of solace for Delaney. Much to his colleagues' surprise, he throws himself into the case, despite constant admonitions from his friends and supervisors that the NYPD's priorities are elsewhere. One of his first visits is to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he consults with Arms and Armor curator Christopher Langley (Gabel) about the type of weapon that could make such a unique wound. The elderly Langley is thrilled to have such a unique problem to solve, and he devotes a great deal of time to research.
The angle of entry and the perfectly spherical nature of the wound rule out most of the weapons familiar to Langley. He decides the weapon must have been some kind of tool, and he visits a hardware store, where he explicitly asks for the best implement to kill someone with. A bemused clerk helps Langley deduce that the weapon was most likely an ice axe.
Delaney has discovered that a similar attack had occurred recently on West 79th Street. After consulting with the perpetually harried Ferguson, he discovers that the wound patterns are nearly identical. As they investigate, they realize that similar attacks have been taking place all over New York City. Langley uses the new information to locate the exact model of ice axe that would cause such injuries. At one sporting goods store, the owner hands over the addresses that he collected from every customer who bought that ice axe. The addresses eventually lead Delaney to the highrise building of Daniel Blank (Dukes).
Blank has been seen intermittently throughout the film cleaning up after his murders. As Delaney closes in on him, Blank attempts one more attack, but it does not go as planned. After striking several blows, his victim escapes only to be run over by a passing car. Delaney's investigation of Blank confirms that he is the killer. Delaney realizes that his chances of arresting and obtaining a murder conviction against Blank are slim due to Blank's wealth and high social position in the city. Before going to confront Blank in his luxury apartment Delaney gets a Luger nine millimeter pistol from a closet in his home. It is a souvenir that Delaney brought home as a soldier returning from World War Two.
Delaney finds Blank curled up in a closet in a deeply disturbed state. He confesses to his crimes before composing himself. Blank brags about how respectable and well-connected he is, and he guarantees that he will get away with his crime. He confidently goes to the phone to report Delaney for breaking and entering. Delaney shoots Blank in the head with the Luger pistol as Blank is speaking with the police operator on the telephone. Delaney goes to his office at the police precinct station house and retires from the police department. As he is leaving the station house the desk sergeant tells him of the discovery of Blank's body and asks him if he want to respond to the call. Delaney informs the sergeant that he has just retired as he walks out of the building. The film ends with Delaney reading to his wife in the hospital as she passes away. He cries as she dies in his arms.

Review: Like the book, this is somewhat slow paced and character-driven, but Sinatra does such a good job at making Delany human and making the audience emote for him that the shortcomings seem minimal.
If you are a fan of Sanders, police procedurals, or Frank Sinatra, then this film is certainly worth checking out..
Delaney is on his last case tracking down a psychotic serial killer while also dealing with his bed-ridden wife (a warm-hearted Faye Dunaway) that's dying in the hospital from an unclear disease.
It manages to hold you there, but not much really happens in this slow-grinding thriller as Frank Sinatra's wearily brooding performance is determined, but filled with melancholy heartache.
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.
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.
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.
I recently watched this movie only because it was on my high def station and it "looked" pretty good, but after waiting over an hour to become interested in it, it ended with a confusing and ho-hum climax.
One wonders exactly what made Sinatra think this was a good idea- he appears pretty bored throughout the film, perhaps shooting for a Philip Marlowe weariness and falling very short.
Sinatra plays a senior police officer in New York who is just about to finish up the job and retire when a strange random murder appeals to him and he becomes the only cop who sees a pattern.
His wife, played by Faye Dunaway, is hospitalized throughout the film and Sinatra's character visits her frequently to try and cheer her up as well as criticize the doctors for not doing enough for her.The supporting cast fills in lots of gaps here and makes this fit in, albeit very strangely, with the NYC exploitation style that was current at the time.
The great Joe Spinell shows up as a doorman, James Whitmore as the coroner, Brenda Vaccaro, Robert Weil, Eddie Jones, Victor Arnold and even a one-second appearance of Bruce Willis in his first film role.
If it weren't bad enough that Zerbe appears needlessly drunk in this scene, his character is supposed to be a no-nonsense captain and when Sinatra asks if he can stay on the case, Zerbe basically says "sure, whatever".
Sinatra merely leaves the scene to let them do the work, appropriately showing his seemingly little concern for the plot of this film.The First Deadly Sin is a very confusing film with more loose ends than a thread factory.
Sinatra picked a very odd piece of work to make his last starring role and there must be some interesting story behind what happened with this obviously well-budgeted film.
"The First Deadly Sin" will be remembered as the last starring role for Frank Sinatra.
It's a good performance in a decent (but should have been better) film.Frank plays a New York homicide detective investigating a series of murders.
The problem comes in the sub-plot with Faye Dunaway as Frank's dying wife.
Faye must have been desperate to work with Frank since she literally spends the entire film in a hospital bed.
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.
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..
Frank Sinatra is a police inspector in New York City, just weeks away from retirement, who notices similarities in a series of murder victims: the skulls of the deceased have all been punctured by some kind of hammer, possibly delivered from behind in a cold blow.
That woman, Faye Dunaway, plays Sinatra's wife, slowly succumbing to a mystery infection that has already rotted her liver, and it's a humiliating role.
Anthony Zerbe gets stuck with the proverbial hard-ass police commander role (he chews Sinatra out for following the insane 'serial killer' angle), but Sinatra does a good job here, keeping a cool head and carrying most of the picture with his innate panache.
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!
While the heart of The First Deadly Sin is a detective crime story, part of the movie is a tender and unusual romance.
Frank Sinatra stars as a tired, not very young detective who tries to solve a murder he's been given very few clues to go off of.
Grizzled veteran police detective Edward Delaney (Frank Sinatra) is investigating the case.
Frank Sinatra in his last starring role (?) plays a detective tracking a killer while caring for his illness-stricken wife, played by Faye Dunaway.
the first deadly sin was the screenplay; the second was sinatra phoning in his performance; the third was the silly waste of faye dunaway in one of the most melodramatic and prolonged hospital death scenes (the whole movie, basically) in film history.
The screenplay artfully removed all the interesting story weaving; the jumping back and forth from killer to cop; the character development and motivation.The movie is so fragmented I doubt anyone who hadn't just read the book will have any idea what is going on.
The plot is derivative and recalls too many serial killer stories .But Frank Sinatra ,portraying a cop nearing retirement ,gives the movie substance ;it's one of his last parts and ,like the character,he seems jaded ,it's a long way from "Tony Rome" or "The detective" .This last affair becomes a last challenge ;he's told that he can give it up but it actually helps him cope with his harsh private life:his wife is seriously ill.Faye Dunaway spends the whole movie bedridden in a gloomy hospital and her husband does not even trust her surgeon.Dunaway makes the best of a thankless part .The scene of the book she used to read when she was a child is a highly emotional moment..
I have already seen "Seven", "The bone collector" and "Copycat", so naturally this doesn't seem to surprise me or anything like that, but I had a great time watching Frank Sinatra in his last major movie appearance and was equally shocked to see Faye Dunaway so woefully wasted on a hospital bed and not enough lines for an amateur let alone ...
I have already seen "Seven", "The bone collector" and "Copycat", so naturally this doesn't seem to surprise me or anything like that, but I had a great time watching Frank Sinatra in his last major movie appearance and was equally shocked to see Faye Dunaway so woefully wasted on a hospital bed and not enough lines for an amateur let alone ...
Excellent Sinatra Performance Wasted in Boring Film.
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.
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.
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.
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..
int his police drama,Frank Sinatra plays a police detective just weeks from retirement,trying to solve a string of murders and stop the murder from killing again.there's another little subplot thrown in that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie,but is merely added to make the film more interesting dramatically,at least,i think that's the reason.Sinatra is very good here,and really the only central character.the rest of the cast are in supporting roles or extended cameos.anyway,the film does work.it's very atmospheric,and the tone is one of almost melancholy,but it works here.my vote for The First deadly Sin is a 6/10.
Frank Sinatra was getting old (this was his last starring role).
Sinatra is definately the highlight and gives a good performance in a role that fits him well.
Faye Dunaway definately needed more screen time but her performance was quite good in the scenes she had.
The depth of the wife's role (Dunaway) is lost, and the crime is "cleaned up" in typical movie fashion.The good news?
It's about a cop(Sinatra), his wife(Dunaway) who is having surgery, in the open credits the doctors getting ready for surgery, the murderer got a sharp hammer and stabs him, and the blood is spilling in the surgeon's uniform, at the end he killed the suspect while calling the police, and got suspended, and then his wife was dying.Look for an uncredited cameo by Bruce Willis.I give it *****..
However, Sinatra apparently ran out of energy (and talent) before he made the movie version of 'The First Deadly Sin'.
This was Sinatra's last starring performance; apparently he'd planned to develop a franchise series based on Sanders's novels, but this movie was such a clanging flop that no sequels were made.
Two later friends of mine had worked (before I knew them) on the crew of this film; they've told me that the production was a nightmare, plagued by wrong-headed decisions.Delaney (Sinatra) is hunting a serial killer while Delaney's wife (Faye Dunaway) struggles with cancer.
The killer is played by David Dukes, who filmed his scenes in Manhattan concurrently while starring on Broadway in 'Bent', in which he played an inmate of a concentration camp.
Frankly, Dukes's performance quite fails to impress me: given the handicap of his inappropriate hairstyle, the casting agent should have chosen another actor (with more hair) instead.We get an utterly pointless scene in which Sinatra swots up evidence with two civilian volunteers, of the sort whom real police call 'cop groupies'.
Sinatra, in a comeback lead performance after a long absence (though it turned out this was his final lead role in a movie), is very good as a close-to-retirement police officer.
***SPOILERS*** Frank Sinatra plays the about to put in his papers and retire NYPD Sergeant Edward X Delaney who's obsessed in finding this ice pick killer who's terrorizing the city of New York.
It doesn't take long to see who this crazed ice pick wielding psycho is since we see him Daniel Blank, David Dukes, as soon as the film starts as he ice picks to death a total stranger who passes him in the street.It's Sgt. Delaney who later notices a pattern in a number of murders over the last three yeas in the city that fit the same MO or description and realizes they, the victims, were that of the very same killer.Meanwhil back in the hospital emergency ward Sgt. Delaney's wife Barbara is fighting for her life as her husband seems to be spending far more time looking for Daniel Blanks then with her when in the critical condition that she's in she needed him most.
And it's the fact that Sgt. Delaney worked on this case alone with no one in the NYPD to see what he did and turn him in he ended up getting away with it.***SPOILERS*** Despite his success in offing the ice pick serial killer in the end Sgt. Delaney ended up losing the person who meant most to him his wife Barbara who died from complications from the blotch operation that was preformed on her.
A more mild and mellower Frank Sinatra did make the movie interesting then it would have been in playing his age,65, and not trying to be at least 20 years younger in the role he had.
As for Faye Dunaway all she did during the entire movie was go in and out of consciousness and try to look pretty, but as white as a sheet, during the entire time she was on camera.
As for David Dukes as the zombie like serial killer Daniel Blank his name, Blank, fit the role he had in his zombie like actions through the entire movie.
MAY CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS I rate this film 7 out of 10 mainly for the strength of Frank Sinatra's performance.He plays a retiring police detective, whose wife has fallen ill and is slowly dying in the hospital.
Seeking to distract himself from his personal troubles, he becomes deeply involved in trying to solve a series of murders and stop the killer.The story is based on a novel by Lawrence Sanders, who wrote a series of "Deadly Sin" mysteries.
It provided Sinatra with his final starring role in a film, and he plays it well.
Unfortunately, the movie doesn't play fair with its audience regarding the killer and it never reaches the tension necessary to be more interesting as a thriller.
Thankfully, Sinatra is in nearly every scene and has some nice interactions with supporting players like James Whitmore, Brenda Vaccaro and Martin Gabel.It's David Dukes' killer that we never really get to know.
And the scenes with Whitmore's coroner and Gabel's curator are nicely played.Had the makers of the film, which include executive producer Sinatra, been more in-tuned to the serial-killer aspect, they may have balanced out the film a bit more.
Also, Faye Dunaway is wasted in her role as the dying wife.
As it is, "First Deadly Sin" represents a solid, yet somber, final star vehicle for Frank Sinatra..
First Deadly Sin -1980 murder mystery flick featuring the last performance of Frank Sinatra and a bed-ridden Faye Dunaway.Sinatra's character is a close to retirement homicide detective in NYC- when he notices similarities with his case and that of a recent case.Sinatra recruits Brenda Vaccarro and a museum curator to help him track down the killer.This felt like a made for TV movie and was pretty bland with a thrown in romance-although the romance sparked one of the more heated moments of the movie when a frustrated Sinatra confronts his wife's doctor about her condition.
Sinatra gave his final dramatic performance in this unusual detective film.
It's unusual because of it's concept which integrates the search for a vicious killer with the agonizing slow death of Sinatra's wife (Dunaway.) The result is hardly uplifting, but is at times interesting.
From there, Sinatra, with the help of some unlikely assistants, works to track down the killer while maintaining a bedside vigil over his wife.
What makes the film interesting is the observation of Sinatra's struggles to get anything done in a mostly uncaring world.
Every time Sinatra makes a stop at the hospital, the film goes off into la la land.
**SPOILER**  Though Sinatra obviously, pointedly  realizes at the end of the film that his wife has expired, Dunaway is clearly seen breathing (not lightly!) right up till the credits!