Middle-aged talents hoping to keep up with the current tastes in cinema. 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. With so many TV cop shows mining this territory, the only reason for the producers to do a theatrical adaptation of Lawrence Sanders' novel was to get Sinatra on-screen again (he hadn't acted since 1977's "Contract on Cherry Street" for television). You can tell right away director Brian G. Hutton and his editor are aiming low: the opening sequence crosscuts between a violent murder on a dark, cold street and a woman in the hospital being sliced open by surgeons. 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. Far better off are James Whitmore as a pathologist and Brenda Vaccaro as the wife of a victim. 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. ** from ****
Review of The First Deadly Sin
