Bookmark:Facebook StumbleUpon Reddit Digg Delicious

Rent Offence (1972)

After 20 years on the British police force, Detective Sergeant Johnson (Sean Connery) has seen too much: 20 years of murders, rapes and countless other violent crimes. One day while interrogating a snide, sarcastic suspect in a child molestation case, all of his pent up anger and hatred surfaces and Johnson loses control, killing the man. What had started out as a routine investigation has turned into a case of police brutality, and Johnson must now attempt to reconcile his own violent behaviour.

Recent Reviews of Offence by our members

You rated this movie: 5

Reviewed by: PV
See my reviews

Offence review by PV

Superb + Overlooked British Psycho-Thriller

(0) of (1) members found this review helpful.

This film is a great find: not only does it have Sean Connery and Trevor Howard - (and bizarrely Peter Bowles in pre-To The Manor Born days), it also has a fine if a little theatrical and Pinter-esque script, and an interesting director in Sidney Lumet, and a piercing score by Harrison Birtwhistle.................... The first 10-15 minutes or more is almost completely free of dialogue, as the story seeps into the screen and it becomes obvious that a child killer is on the loose, after some baffling sequences that make sense later........... I loved the silence in this film, and the piercing sound design, aimed at making aural the troubled mind of the protagonist - but perhaps what most impressed me was the way a police thriller turned into a deep psychological thriller about the mental breakdown of the Connery character. This movies is SO much more interesting than most Hollywood police thrillers today. I'd compare it to Get Carter - but better, for me, anyway.......... Now the negatives: My first criticism is that perhaps it is is sometimes a bit dated, 1972 still being infected with that tiresome sixties vibe - so we get too many odd sound and vision episodes (though some are OK)........ My second is that, especially when characters are shouting, they are hard to hear - not because of background music, as in films nowadays, but because of the less good microphones used back then: if I watched this again I would certainly use subtitles from the off (though the DVD menu design is rubbish so you'll have to search for the hard of hearing thing)...... But all in all: this film is great. A must-see. In my top 10 or even top 5 British thrillers. It's a film that I have never seen on TV and it's been sadly neglected, I think, for some unknown reason (maybe the child killer theme?)