The Offence

1973 "After 20 years, what detective-sergeant Johnson has seen and done is destroying him."
6.9| 1h52m| R| en| More Info
Released: 11 May 1973 Released
Producted By: Tantallon
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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A burned-out British police detective finally snaps while interrogating a suspected child molester.

Genre

Drama, Crime

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Director

Sidney Lumet

Production Companies

Tantallon

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The Offence Audience Reviews

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
GamerTab That was an excellent one.
Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.
Somnath Bhattacharya I happened to stumble upon this unrecognized masterpiece. Very few movies have actually quite managed to delve into deep human psyche, this one's that. Sean 'Bond' Connery seems to have been possessed by his character. His character's mind shows just how dangerous is the human psyche, it makes you feel it's not you somehow it takes you over and you become someone else. l years of working on crime scenes with child rape and murder, Johnson(Character) has had enough and is done with when something even more heinous shows up. His mind has seemed to arouse his interests in doing the crime that he's been working on. That's how evil a human psyche can get. Those moments between him and the accused Baxter shows.Well, this should have been received well by fans. I'm surprised with the low votes and ratings. Such a realistic way of portraying stuff. THE OFFENCE will surely leave you shaken.
Prismark10 The Offence is regarded as a favourite of Sean Connery but hardly anyone saw it on its cinema release. It did find an audience on television where it was regularly repeated.The film was made by American directing legend, Sidney Lumet. Yet the film is set in a new town in the outer area of London. It is an urban environment that is very British, more at home to an episode of the TV series The Bill and not likely to be made by the person who did 'Dog Day Afternoon' or '12 Angry Men.'This town is under siege. There is a child attacker and parents are worried and the police are out in force protecting the streets. Connery is a detective on the edge of sanity. He has seen a lot of horror in his work and it has got too him. His home life is a wreck and he has found the body of one of the girl's that was attacked but she is still alive.When the police arrest a drunken suspect (Ian Bannen) Connery thinks he has found the right man and interrogates him, brutally if necessary. Connery who brought an animal swagger to his James Bond and was a former bodybuilder, hulks over Bannen in the police room scenes. Yet there is a lot of psychological cat and mouse games between Bannen and Connery. Bannen is a little man who has always been bullied throughout his life by men like Connery and yet he came through such bullies and made a success of his life.When the red mist gets the better of Connery, Bannen dies in custody. We never find out if he was the actual culprit although I always regarded Bannen as innocent. The wrong man at the wrong place.We then see Connery getting interrogated by a superior office (Trevor Howard) and it is in these scenes we realise how much on the edge and out of control Connery is as we see the flashbacks.The film is terrifically acted by Bannen and Connery. The film with its early 70s, British urban setting and a host of familiar British character actors gives it a unique as well as now a historic look. It is still uncomfortable viewing but the film deserves your time.
billseper I've seen many movies that undertook the subject of evil. They come and they go year in and year out. Some do it reasonably well like Hitchcock's 1960 thriller, "Psycho", for instance. However, if anything, "Psycho" tried a little too hard to be frightening, so that, in the end we came away feeling that the subject was one of fear itself more than of the thing that made us fearful. Michael Powell also released "Peeping Tom" in 1960, a movie about a psychopathic photographer/cinematographer who kills women and films them as they're dying. "Peeping Tom" was certainly creepy and disturbing, but in all the wrong ways. The murderer was treated as a poor, misunderstood man whose upbringing molded him into the villain he became instead of recognizing and acknowledging the self-will that must always be involved in the transgressions of man. The treatment of evil in most other films is either too underplayed to make us think hard about what evil really is, or is a typical Saturday afternoon cinema thriller like "The Exorcist" and its myriad of clones which are generally steeped in outward physical manifestations that all too often seem more of an excuse for showing off their latest special effects arsenal than anything.There are few films which try to show us that "subtle suggestion" that evil plays within all mankind, that essence of a presence which can be felt in your marrow trying to work its way to the outward physical universe as though it's in need of a host to do any real damage to the world. (I'll never forget reading Charles Williams' book "Witchcraft" and his line about how demons "pine for matter", something which still chills me). 1972 brought us, however, what may be the two most notable and praiseworthy treatments of that subtle suggestion of evil within. One was "The Other" about a young boy who seems truly tormented by his own psychopathic inner twin (actually he had a real life twin who had died and which his mind has turned into an inward dwelling entity of destruction)."The Offence" is the other great film on the subject of evil from the same year. The offence mentioned in the title is that of child molestation. There is a molester loose who not only rapes little girls, he does his best to make it hurt, to make them feel some of his own anguish for childhood traumas inflicted on him early in life. But we'll find nothing of "Peeping Tom" and its misplaced sympathy for the villain. Sean Connery is a police officer/detective who, by God, will have none of that! However, the movie takes a very strange turn during the interrogation, and during the second half of the film we get a real honest to goodness glimpse of what God must have meant when he said to Cain just before he killed Abel, "…sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Let me also echo what many film critics have said before me: Anyone who claims Sean Connery can't act hasn't seen this film! He is nothing short of brilliant in this movie. Having said that however, Ian Bannen very nearly steals the show with his performance as the suspected villain. I can't recommend this one enough.
Raegan Butcher Devastating performance from Sean Connery in this criminally under-appreciated tour-de-force. A wet gray chilly England is the setting. Connery's cop has seen too much in his 20 yrs on the force. A series of sex attacks on children is just the latest in a long line of horrors to be dealt with on a daily basis. How can a man see such things and still stay sane? This is without a doubt Sean Connery's finest screen performance.Sidney Lumet conducts the whole affair with his usual precision and expertise. The whole cast is excellent in their respective roles. But this is really Connery's film. He should have won an Oscar for this. Viewing The Offense is not a pleasant experience. But it is as powerful as a keg of nitroglycerin. Once seen, not a film to be forgotten easily.