Dark Alley

By RICHARD CORLISS

THE FIRST DEADLY SIN

Directed by Brian Hutton

Screenplay by Mann Rubin

Frank Sinatra returns to the big screen after a decade's absence, but it is as if he had never been away. He spent the last years of the '60s making a trio of police dramas (Tony Rome, The Detective, Lady in Cement), and here he is, at 64, back in the N.Y.P.D. to solve one last crime before retirement. A whitecollar, black-leather maniac named Blank (David Dukes) is on the loose in Manhattan with an ice ax and too much spare time. Because the murders have been committed in different parts of town, the harried police captain offers Sergeant Edward X. Delaney (Sinatra) no help in cracking the case. The old campaigner must catch the slick psycho on his own.

Lawrence Sanders' novel could serve as the basis for a taut, lurid little film noir, but this adaptation is as plodding and routine as most police work--or as a police novel unredeemed by narrative surprises or a galvanic prose style. The plot doubles back on itself and wanders off on pointless tangents. A subplot involving Delaney's critically ill wife (Faye Dunaway) is never integrated into the manhunt story, and Dunaway is wasted in a role that keeps her flat on her back. Mostly, she is forgotten as the gumshoe and the hobnail boots approach each other for the climactic confrontation. But Delaney is never in real danger: when Blank is finally cornered, he starts to cry. The resourceful villain becomes a whining victim. The dark alley, which promised delicious thrills, is a narrative dead end.

Sinatra still knows how to seize the screen simply by being around and being himself. But most of those behind the screen settled for hackwork. Catechists will recall that pride is the first deadly sin. Would that Director Hutton had taken some pride in honest craftsmanship.

On the evidence, he fell victim to the seventh: sloth.

-- By Richard Corliss

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