tieman64 Based on a play by John Hopkins, "The Offence" stars Sean Connery as a violent policeman on the hunt of a child molester, played by Ian Bannen.Much of the film simply consists of Connery and Bannen in an interrogation room. It's a battle of the wills, Bannen feigning innocence and Connery insistent that the man is guilty. Of course, everyone thinks Bannen is telling the truth, except Connery, who's been in the gutter so long he knows the mind of a criminal inside out.Not only does Connery know that Bannen is guilty, but he himself identifies with and understands how Bannen thinks. They share the same mind, they've both been to the filthy depths of humanity, both adept at inflicting hurt on each other.The film ends with Connery assaulting Bannen. Unconscious and on the verge of death, Bannen is taken to the very same hospital that his victim, the molested child, was taken. IE- Connery has become a "rapist" just like the man he hunted.Prior to this, flashbacks show Connery being interrogated by his superiors for killing Bannen. This interrogation mirrors Connery's interrogation of Bannen. The tables are turned and it is now Connery who is being questioned and bullied by superiors. IE- power structures hinge on the very dominant/submissive relationship so favoured by Ian Banner's child molester.7.5/10 – Director Sidney Lumet tries to break free of Hopkins' stage play by using flashbacks, slow motion and wonderfully moody exterior shots, but it's not enough. This is filmed theatre, far too stagy and reliant on dialogue.

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.

Petri Pelkonen In his 20 years as a policeman Detective-Sergeant Johnson has seen a lot.His memories haunt him, he sees pictures in his head and he is falling into mental breakdown.And now he's investigating a case with a child molester attacking young girls.They find a man, Kenneth Baxter, who could be him.Johnson gets in the room with him.After interrogating him, he beats him up and he dies later in the hospital.The Offence from 1972 is a less known work from Sidney Lumet.I can't see why.This his British film certainly should deserve more credit.Sean Connery gives one of his strongest performances as Johnson.Those moments where he interrogates Baxter and does him violence, or with his wife sharing a bad memory as a cop...in those moments Connery does a very good job leading us into Johnson's psyche.Vivient Merchant does a very good job playing his unloving wife Maureen.Ian Bannen is Kenneth Baxter and he's great in his role.The brilliant English actor Trevor Howard portrays Detective Superintendent Cartwright, who interrogates Johnson.Peter Bowles plays Detective Inspector Cameron.The Offence gives a truly fascinating look at the human psyche.If you find this film, don't miss it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU A small English film, well done and many other things, but the interest is not in the plot because we know from the very start who the rapist is. But the whole interest of the film is how the rapist does not know he is one, does not remember his crime and how his memory is going to come back little by little, though it will take him killing another – at least – man who managed to see through his official innocence. That shows how being a rapist is a very special crime. It is a secret crime that happens in the deepest depth of one's mind and of which the rapist himself is not conscious, though his subconscious, when it takes over to guide him through the crime, is extremely well organized and makes him do exactly what is necessary for him to succeed and to go through it without any problem or opposition. This subconscious is also strong enough to make him forget about the crime entirely so that he does not have to hide anything since he does not know any more, though he does not need his torch in the night to go back to the girl in the woods, and her reaction confirms in our eyes the fact he is the rapist even if he is trying to comfort her now. And yet that subconscious is trying to hide the tracks of the crime by looking for an easy scapegoat who would in a way or another accept, willy-nilly or unwillingly if necessary, to be the surrogate rapist. The transfer of another transfer, and that is the beginning of the fall of the rapist because he will become a criminal of his own. And we are set wondering how it is possible for a criminal of that type to mislead his surrounding co-workers or even relatives and acquaintances into believing he is an innocent good man. How can crime hide so well and so deep in a man's deeper layers of his personality? Apart from that tricky psychological side of the film, it is rather simple and uneventful. But just try to imagine how he is going to realize he is the rapist and how the people around him are going to realize he is the rapist. And we can only have a flitting picture of what he did to the various witnesses or people who are in his way to leveling the witnesses into the ground. Quite a bloody trail.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines