The First Deadly Sin (1980)

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General		Extras
Category	Thriller	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1980
Running Time	107:21
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Brian G. Hutton
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Frank Sinatra Faye Dunaway David Dukes George Coe Brenda Vaccaro Martin Gabel Anthony Zerbe James Whitmore Joe Spinell Anna Navarro Jeffrey DeMunn John Devaney Robert Weil
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$14.90	Music	Gordon Jenkins

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Night in the city. A man is walking down a dark street. He passes another who then turns and strikes the man in the head with a instrument that looks like an icepick. These shots are intercut with scenes from an operation, where a woman (Faye Dunaway) is being cut open. This beginning of The First Deadly Sin is not for the squeamish, although the violence is more implied than explicit.

    The next morning, the police and forensic experts are out in force. Sergeant Ed Delaney (Frank Sinatra) and the coroner (James Whitmore) examine the body for clues. A wallet is found under the corpse, so robbery can be ruled out as a motive. Delaney is on the verge of retirement. His new captain (Anthony Zerbe) tells him to keep out of trouble and not make waves before he hangs up his badge. Delaney wants to crack the murder case before he retires, and discovers that a similar killing had occurred in another precinct. From the autopsy it is not clear what the murder weapon was, but it sounds like some sort of older style weapon.

    He goes to a museum to try to discover what the murder weapon was. The curator, Mr Langley, while ruling out a mediaeval weapon, becomes interested in the case and decides to help out by visiting hardware stores looking for a tool that fits the description. Meanwhile, Delaney's wife has had a serious kidney operation, as we saw in the opening sequences, so he spends time trying to come to terms with that, spends time with his wife and also has trouble getting in contact with his wife's doctor to discuss her health. On top of that Delaney tries to track down the killer.

    This is a low-key police film based on a novel by Lawrence Sanders. While I have not read the book, it seems to me that the screenplay is an attempt to transcribe the storyline of the book into a film, but fails in the attempt to make a film narrative out of it. The book must have been a combination of a detective story and a character study, and the film appears to fall between these two stools, succeeding in being neither one nor the other. Sinatra tries hard to bring the character of Delaney to life but is defeated by the material. There is not enough of the detective work shown for the film to work on that level either.

    What I liked about this film is that it does not attempt to create a dialogue between the killer and the police, as is the case in many such films of recent times. The killer does not know the detective, and he does not send clues to the police nor has he a preconceived pattern that he is following. This film is not above the average but it is sufficiently different from the current crop of similar films to be of interest. The performances are all sincere and capable, though there is nothing exceptional here. Sinatra plays much the same character he played in 1968's The Detective, with a very obvious toupee. Dunaway is wasted as his ill wife as is Brenda Vaccaro as the widow of the first victim. Whitmore is adequate as the coroner, and Martin Gabel is fine as Langley. This film is no masterpiece, playing much like a telefeature with added profanity and violence, but it whiles away the time effectively.

Video

    The film is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. The original aspect ratio was 1.85:1, and the slick states that this is the aspect ratio of this transfer.

    The video transfer is reasonably sharp. At a guess, I would say that it has been taken from a video master, as it lacks the sharpness of a digital transfer. Shadow detail is not the best, with some murky happenings on the darkened streets and in darkened rooms. The dark suits of the police show very little in the way of detail.

    The colour is much like those gritty cop shows of the 1970s, like Kojak for example, with muted colours intended to reflect the dinginess of the city. Flesh tones are close to lifelike most of the time. There looks to be a little colour bleeding from time to time, but this is fairly minor and would not be distracting unless you are looking for it.

    I did not notice any major video artefacts. There is some dirt and occasional dark flecks, but otherwise this is a fairly clean transfer. Grain levels are higher than I would have liked, with slight pixelization apparent throughout. There are minor compression problems with some very slight blockiness during the few action scenes, and chroma noise and macro-blocking appearing in the background of several indoor shots, but you would not notice unless you were specifically looking for it.

    This single-layered disc has English subtitles in white characters with black borders. They are quite readable against the background and appear to be consistent with the dialogue.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The single audio track is Dolby Digital 2.0. I did not detect anything in the way of stereo information, in fact I think this might be a mono mix. The audio is of reasonable quality, and apart from occasionally sounding thin, what issues there are with the audio arise from the original recording. For example, in the scene where Langley comes to the police station to show Delaney what he thinks might be the murder weapon, Langley's dialogue is louder and clearer than Sinatra's, indicating that the microphone was not ideally positioned. Audio sync is exemplary.

    The music score is by Gordon Jenkins, who rarely wrote for the screen and seems to have worked with Sinatra as music director. The score is variable, with effective heightening of tension using some synthesised sounds but also with some overly dramatic music that does not fit with the onscreen action, especially in the opening sequence. There are long stretches without any music, which works for the film I think.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    No extras are provided.

    This film has been released on DVD in Region 1, however that version is a pan and scan 1.33:1 transfer and has a Dolby Digital 1.0 mono audio track, so Region 4 is the clear winner here.

    An average detective thriller with a downbeat story, this makes for an interesting diversion but I could not imagine anyone watching it more than once.

    The video quality is average.

    The audio quality is satisfactory.

    There are no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall