****SPOILERS**** Superior cop movie that shows how the stress and rigors of being a policeman, or homicide detective, can turns the best of us into the monsters that we want kept away and locked up from society.
Det. Sgt. Johnson, Sean Connery, is put in charge of the case of the missing and possibly murdered elementary school girl Janie Edmonds, Maxine Gordon. We already see at the beginning of the film "The Offence" that Sgt. Johnson had cracked up and lost control of himself so it's no surprise that the case will eventually get to him. Feeling that the person responsible in the Janie Edmound kidnapping is not worth living has Sgt. Johnson blinded to the law he's sworn to uphold.
It's after finding Janie brutally raped and left for dead in the moors outside of town that has Sgt. Johnson now become obsessed in finding her rapist and by the time the evening is out Kenneth Baxter, Ian Bannen, is arrested and booked as a suspect in the crime. Baxter who's only suspected in Janie's kidnapping and rape is put in a holding cell for interrogation but the by now out of control Sgt. Johnson has everyone leave the holding cell and decides to interrogate Baxter himself, in his own unique and brutal way.
Made during the heyday of cop and private eye films, like "Dirty Harry" "Shamus" and "The French Connection", where brutally was not only endorsed but celebrated in enforcing law and order the movie shows the other, and unlawful, side of enforcing the law. "The Offence" to it's credit shows how these outrageous and unlawful actions by policemen can it fact end up brutalizing and killing far more innocent people then the criminals possibly can with almost no recourse for the cops' victims.
Baxter is taken for granted to be Janie's attacker by Sgt. Johnson, even though Janie is alive and has yet been called to identify him, and during almost half the movie he works the helpless and terrified man over so brutally and sadistically that he ends up dying in police custody. Sgt. Johnson we learn from his cat and mouse conversation with Baxter, in order to break him down mentally, is a bigger nut case then Baxter, if he's is fact guilty of Janie's kidnapping and rape, ever was.
It's when Baxter, while being interrogated, unknowingly reveals some very deep dark and hidden secrets that Sgt. Johnson has kept locked up in his troubled head since childhood that the cop really starts to lose it. It's as if Sgt. Johnson is far more outraged at what Baxter brings out about him, as well as Baxter himself, than what he's suspected in doing by kidnapping and raping about a half dozen, including Janie Edmound, young girls in and around town!
The movie is shown at first with Sgt. Johnson already having killed Baxter with the remainder of the film having the very disturbed policeman interrogated himself, far more humanly that his interrogation of Kenneth Baxter, by his boss Detective Supervisor Carthwright,Trevor Howard.
As all the walls that Sgt. Johnson had built around himself in hiding his true feelings not only from himself but also from his long suffering wife Maureen, Vivien Merchart,are slowly torn away he's left naked in seeing himself as the monster that he really is. A monster that in all his 20 years as a law enforcer Sgt. Johnson never once encounter.
Det. Sgt. Johnson, Sean Connery, is put in charge of the case of the missing and possibly murdered elementary school girl Janie Edmonds, Maxine Gordon. We already see at the beginning of the film "The Offence" that Sgt. Johnson had cracked up and lost control of himself so it's no surprise that the case will eventually get to him. Feeling that the person responsible in the Janie Edmound kidnapping is not worth living has Sgt. Johnson blinded to the law he's sworn to uphold.
It's after finding Janie brutally raped and left for dead in the moors outside of town that has Sgt. Johnson now become obsessed in finding her rapist and by the time the evening is out Kenneth Baxter, Ian Bannen, is arrested and booked as a suspect in the crime. Baxter who's only suspected in Janie's kidnapping and rape is put in a holding cell for interrogation but the by now out of control Sgt. Johnson has everyone leave the holding cell and decides to interrogate Baxter himself, in his own unique and brutal way.
Made during the heyday of cop and private eye films, like "Dirty Harry" "Shamus" and "The French Connection", where brutally was not only endorsed but celebrated in enforcing law and order the movie shows the other, and unlawful, side of enforcing the law. "The Offence" to it's credit shows how these outrageous and unlawful actions by policemen can it fact end up brutalizing and killing far more innocent people then the criminals possibly can with almost no recourse for the cops' victims.
Baxter is taken for granted to be Janie's attacker by Sgt. Johnson, even though Janie is alive and has yet been called to identify him, and during almost half the movie he works the helpless and terrified man over so brutally and sadistically that he ends up dying in police custody. Sgt. Johnson we learn from his cat and mouse conversation with Baxter, in order to break him down mentally, is a bigger nut case then Baxter, if he's is fact guilty of Janie's kidnapping and rape, ever was.
It's when Baxter, while being interrogated, unknowingly reveals some very deep dark and hidden secrets that Sgt. Johnson has kept locked up in his troubled head since childhood that the cop really starts to lose it. It's as if Sgt. Johnson is far more outraged at what Baxter brings out about him, as well as Baxter himself, than what he's suspected in doing by kidnapping and raping about a half dozen, including Janie Edmound, young girls in and around town!
The movie is shown at first with Sgt. Johnson already having killed Baxter with the remainder of the film having the very disturbed policeman interrogated himself, far more humanly that his interrogation of Kenneth Baxter, by his boss Detective Supervisor Carthwright,Trevor Howard.
As all the walls that Sgt. Johnson had built around himself in hiding his true feelings not only from himself but also from his long suffering wife Maureen, Vivien Merchart,are slowly torn away he's left naked in seeing himself as the monster that he really is. A monster that in all his 20 years as a law enforcer Sgt. Johnson never once encounter.