THE OFFENCE
Directed by SIDNEY LUMET Screenplay by JOHN HOPKINS
Whenever Sidney Lumet and Sean Connery get together, the subject seems to be sadomasochism. It was the major theme of The Hill, a subtext of The Anderson Tapes, and now, in The Offence, it is once again a central preoccupation.
In a raw new London suburb, the police are engaged in an all-out man hunt for a sex pervert who molests children. Connery is a detective who brings a peculiar passion to the pursuit. When a prime suspect (Ian Bannen) is captured, Connery takes over the interrogation and in the process beats the man to death. This much we know almost from the beginning, so the film is less of a whodunit than a whydunit.
Unfortunately, however, John Hopkins' script almost immediately starts dropping broad hints on this matter too. Flash cuts and dialogue indicate Connery cannot purge his mind of the dirty pictures left there by previous investigations of violent crimes. They are pulling him toward a psychopathy as profound as any he has ever investigated, and the beating of Bannen is a demonstration that mental illness can be infectious. It is also a working out anew of the cliche that the difference between the police mentality and the criminal mind is small and easily blurred.
Lumet's direction strives to give to material that is neither edifying nor suspenseful a fake profundity, stretching it to unconscionable lengths. But at least he allows his actors plenty of room to roam. Connery's confession to his wife (Vivien Merchant) of his long struggle to save his sanity, and her recognition of unconscious complicity with the forces that are driving him crazy, is a gripping scene, full of what might be termed home truth. Trevor Howard, as a fellow officer investigating Connery, plays an almost equally strong scene as he tries to get Connery's confession into the public record. The climactic moments are first-rate.
The misfortune of the film is that what Connery is shocked to learn about himself is something any sensible per son will have long since guessed. That is the trouble with sadomasochism as a subject. It is easy to catch its surface symptoms, but its roots are too deeply buried to be dug up and exposed by any but the most skilled and sensitive artists. Lumet is not one of them. Despite good acting, audiences will want to avoid The Offence,