Sidney Lumet's excellent 1972 police thriller The Offence follows cop named Detective Sergeant Johnson (Sean Connery) who is, for lack of a better term, burnt out. He's spent the last two decades working in the big city as a cop and he's seen it all: rape, murder, assault… you name it. This type of thing takes a toll on a person and the chinks in Johnson's armor are starting to show. When he winds up interrogating a man named Kevin Baxter (Ian Bannen) who he suspects is guilty of a rash of sexual assaults on young girls in the area, he finally has enough and he snaps and once he loses control he beats Baxter severely during his interrogation.

Of course, Johnson's actions have repercussions, not just in his professional life, but in his personal life as well where he takes out some of his anger and frustration on his wife, Maureen (Vivien Merchant). Eventually Johnson finds himself on the opposite end of the interrogation table as his commanding officer, Cartwright (Trevor Howard), attempts to find out just exactly what happened.

Based on a play by John Hopkins who adapted his own work for the screen in this version, The Offence is a thought provoking and remarkably well acted film that's part police thriller and part dramatic character study. As Johnson's character evolves over the course of the events in the film, we and obviously he quickly come to realize that there are more than a few similarities between the man he has become and those he is tasked with bringing to justice and as the film makes this increasingly clear where you'd expect him to strive for redemption he instead strives for acceptance. Here Hopkins is able to craft a very interesting and believable character, a dichotomy of sorts wherein we're asked to try and understand a man who once strived for the greater good but who is now quite spoiled by that which has surrounded him all these years. Johnson is far from perfect, but he is refreshingly and honestly human.

Of course, all of this fantastic dramatic tension would be for naught if the performances weren't up to par. Vivien Merchant, who appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy that same year, is excellent as the sympathetic wife. She wants to stand by her husband and cares for him quite deeply but is not blind as to the person that he has become. Also quite good here is Trevor Howard, probably best known for his part in Carol Reed's masterful The Third Man. Without going into spoiler territory his character is more complex than you might first expect him to be and it's interesting to compare his performance here to that of Connery's and to see what the two police officers do and do not have in common. Ian Bannen is magnificently dislikable as the subject but as you'd expect it is most definitely Connery that really impresses here. His take on Johnson is as masterstroke of character driven tension. He's about to explode at any moment throughout the film, we know this and to a larger degree we not only expect it but understand it, and Connery handles every possible aspect of this performance perfectly. The actor worked with Lumet prior on both The Hill and The Anderson Tapes and he was great in both of those pictures, but his work here is on an altogether different level entirely.

Lumet's direction is a little stagey but that makes total sense given the story's origins in live theater. Gerry Fisher, who had also worked with Lumet prior, handles the cinematography quite gracefully and the movie has a very understated but no less effective look about it. Harrison Birtwistle's score is also very good here. This won't be a movie that appeals to those who want their cop films to be all action and nothing but, however that shouldn't dissuade anyone who appreciates good storytelling, fine acting and some remarkable tension and suspense from seeking this one out.

The Offence debuts on Blu-ray from Kino in a 1.85.1 widescreen transfer presented in AVC encoded 1080p high definition. For the most part the image is clean and nicely detailed. A layer of natural looking film grain is present throughout but there isn't much in the way of actual print damage to note at all. Texture and depth are pleasing and the grim landscape of the gloomy British locations where all of this plays out are replicated well. Colors are rendered very naturally, though this is a fairly dark looking film overall, and black levels are strong. No compression artifacts are here worth mentioning and the image is free of any edge enhancement or noise reduction.