The Offence

A veteran British police detective finally breaks during the questioning of a man suspected of molesting a child. The interrogation turns violent, and the suspect dies. The story moves back and forth in time to show how a long career spent among murders, robberies and sexual assaults, together with a marriage that has grown distant, brought the officer to that point. Afterwards he is made to answer for what he did, and his own account of himself becomes harder to sustain. Sidney Lumet directed the film, working from a screenplay by John Hopkins; Denis O'Dell produced it for Tantallon. It was Lumet's eighth feature in a career that includes twenty-six directing credits, arriving between Serpico and Murder on the Orient Express. Sean Connery plays Detective Sergeant Johnson, with Trevor Howard as Detective Superintendent Cartwright, Vivien Merchant as Johnson's wife Maureen, Ian Bannen as Kenneth Baxter, Peter Bowles as Detective Inspector Cameron and Derek Newark as Frank Jessard. Twenty-two performers are credited. The film runs 113 minutes and was released in January 1973. On TMDB it holds a rating of 6.8 out of 10 from 181 votes, a modest but steady level of approval for a crime drama of this period.