The Offence
| The Offence | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Sidney Lumet |
| Written by | John Hopkins |
| Produced by | Denis O'Dell |
| Starring | Sean Connery Trevor Howard Vivien Merchant Ian Bannen Peter Bowles Derek Newark Ronald Radd |
| Cinematography | Gerry Fisher |
| Edited by | John Victor-Smith |
| Music by | Harrison Birtwistle |
| Distributed by | United Artists (theatrical release) MGM Home Entertainment (UK) (DVD release) (2004) Optimum Releasing (UK) (DVD re-release) (2008) |
Release dates | May 11, 1972 (UK) May 11, 1973 (USA) September 12, 2007 (France)[1] |
Running time | 112 min. |
| Country | UK/USA |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,000,000 |
The Offence is a 1972 drama film, based upon the acclaimed 1968 stage play This Story of Yours by John Hopkins, directed by Sidney Lumet under the working title Something Like the Truth. It stars Sean Connery as police detective Johnson who snaps and kills Kenneth Baxter (Ian Bannen), a suspected child molester. The film explores Johnson's varied, often aggressive attempts at rationalizing towards a number of people what he did for what he thought Baxter to be, also using his gruesome job as a police officer as an excuse. It is not until the end of the film that Baxter's death is seen in a prolonged flashback, revealing Johnson's true motives for killing him. The tagline is "After 20 years what Detective-Sergeant Johnson has seen and done is destroying him." It is the only film that Sir Harrison Birtwistle has written music for.
The film was one of two feature films starring Connery after his debut as James Bond that had not seen a North American release on DVD by 2008, the other being Woman of Straw (1964).[2] In 2008, an online petition was set up to bring the film to North American DVD and Blu-ray Disc.[3] By that time, the film was available on the iTunes Store in several countries, including the United States, and also the Amazon.com video on demand service, Amazon Unbox. MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment eventually gave The Offence a manufactured-on-demand DVD-R release in North America in April 2010.
Plot summary
Detective-Sergeant Johnson (Connery) has been a police officer for 20 years, and is deeply affected by the murders, rapes, and other violent crimes he has investigated.
His anger surfaces while interrogating a man named Baxter (Bannen), whom he suspects of raping a young girl; by the end of the interrogation, Johnson has beaten him to death. Johnson is suspended and returns home for the night, and gets into a violent argument with his wife, Maureen (Vivien Merchant). The following day, Johnson is interrogated by Detective Superintendent Cartwright (Trevor Howard), and during the long interrogation flashbacks show the events during the night when Johnson killed Baxter. During the interrogation, Baxter — whose guilt or innocence is left ambiguous — had begun taunting Johnson, insinuating that Johnson secretly wanted to commit the sort of sex crimes he investigated. Johnson at first flew into a rage and struck Baxter, but he eventually admitted that he did indeed harbor obsessive fantasies of murder and rape, and that he was losing his mind under the strain. He then tearfully begged Baxter to help him; when Baxter recoiled from him in disgust, Jonhson snapped and killed him. The film ends with another flashback, this time of Johnson attacking the police officers who pulled him off of Baxter, and muttering, "God...my God..." as he realizes what he has done.
Cast
- Sean Connery as Detective Sergeant Johnson
- Trevor Howard as Lieutenant Cartwright, Detective Superintendent
- Vivien Merchant as Maureen Johnson
- Ian Bannen as Kenneth Baxter
- Peter Bowles as Detective Inspector Cameron
- Derek Newark as Frank Jessard
- Ronald Radd as Lawson
- John Hallam as Panton
- Richard Moore as Garrett
- Anthony Sagar as Hill
- Maxine Gordon as Janie Edmonds, The Raped Girl
- Hilda Fenemore as Woman on the common
- Rhoda Lewis as Woman at the school
- Cynthia Lund as Child at the school
- Howard Goorney as Lambert
Background
When Connery agreed to return as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever, United Artists pledged to back two of Connery's film projects of his own free choosing, including free choice for his own role, provided they would be costing $2m or less. The Offence, made under the working title of Something Like the Truth due to Connery's choice of Hopkins' script, was completed in one month with a budget of $1 million. The action sequences of the physical interaction between Connery and Bannen were designed by an uncredited Bob Simmons, who had designed similar action scenes for the Bond films.[4]
The Offence was a commercial failure and did not yield a profit for nine years, even going unreleased in several markets, including France, where it did not premiere until 2007. United Artists pulled out of the deal and the next project, a film version of Macbeth that Connery was to direct, was scotched by Roman Polanski's adaptation.
The film was shot mainly on location in Bracknell, Berkshire.
DVD releases
In 2004, MGM UK released a DVD of the film which contained no extras or trailers. Simultaneous releases from MGM were made in other PAL format countries, such as Germany and Australia. On October 20, 2008, the film was again released on DVD in the UK by Optimum Releasing, again without extras or trailers. As of 2009, the film has not been released on DVD in North America, one of the few films of either Sean Connery or Sidney Lumet not to do so. In April 2010, MGM finally put the film out on a U.S. DVD-R. It is available as an exclusive from Amazon.com. This DVD-R is widescreen and contains no extras. A Region 2 DVD (with no extras) became available in 2011.
Critics
"A fascinating look at the human psyche based on Z Cars scriptwriter John Hopkins acclaimed stage play This Story of Yours, The Offence is an expertly crafted study of evil and human weakness that demands to be watched in its entirety. [...] it still packs quite a punch and features compelling performances from both Sean Connery and Ian Bannen."
— Britmovie
"Less well-known than his other British pictures (The Hill, The Deadly Affair, Murder on the Orient Express), this unrelentingly somber policier inaugurates a newfound force in Lumet’s work. The story, adapted by John Hopkins from his play, abounds in stylistic tics (recurring visual motifs, various events replayed several times, color coding), but the flashiness that pockmarked much of the director’s earlier work has been pruned to hushed, concentrated intensity. Likewise, the movie looks ahead to the bathed-in-gray themes of Lumet’s later studies of law & order ambivalence -- Connery’s pressure-cooker copper, plagued with lurid images palpitating inside his brain, is the template for the protagonists of Serpico, Prince of the City and Q & A. Connery pinpoints some fantastic shadings of bullying, dissatisfaction and self-disgust, matched by Bannen’s peerless razzing — the culminating pounding is less liberating purgation than guilt transference, christened by Bannen’s bloodied leer."
— Fernando F. Croce, Cinepassion
"The notion of a 'good cop' becoming corrupted by the day to day horrors of his job is nothing new, but it plays out in a way that is completely engrossing, even edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. [...] Ultimately Lumet is less concerned with constructing a whodunit than he is in exploring the dynamic between these two seemingly disparate men, who become more and more alike as their interrogation plays out. [...] The end result is Connery's realization (unspoken) that he is, in fact, of the same 'species' as the people he has so bitterly denounced throughout the film. [...] His moment of clarity is not a moment of 'redemption' so much as it is an acceptance of personal guilt.
The central performances are absolutely brilliant. Connery has never been better, even if he did win an Academy Award for The Untouchables (1987). [...] had this film been better received in 1972, his performance would have garnered him an Oscar nomination. Bannen takes a character that, on the printed page, may have seemed completely unsavory and makes him oddly likable. [...] Trevor Howard and Vivien Merchant also do superb work in their smaller roles [...].
An absolutely fantastic film, The Offence deserves to be far better known and revered. Few films have been as successful at being so ambiguous as well as so dialogue-heavy."— DVD Maniacs
References
External links
- The Offence at IMDb
- Original theatrical trailer for The Offence