Product Details

• Actors: Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Vivien Merchant, Ian Bannen
• Directors: Sidney Lumet
• Writers: Written by JOHN HOPKINS
• Producers: Produced by DENIS O'DELL
• Format: NTSC
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: MGM
• DVD Release Date: May 3, 2010
• Run Time: 108 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B003B3NV7C
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #55,587 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The Offence" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Sidney Lumet directs Sean Connery as a British police detective whose 20 years of handling murder, rape and other violent cases culminate in a deadly loss of control during a routine interrogation. 16 x 9.  Important Note: This film has been manufactured from the best-quality video master currently available and has not been remastered or restored specifically for this DVD release.

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sean Connery proves he's one of the greatest pure actors, November 9, 1999

By 

David Dearborn (Connecticut USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Offence [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Anyone wondering about the true acting ability of Sean Connery should catch this grim psychological drama directed with stark realism (as usual) by Sidney Lumet. I knew he could act through the smirks and savoir faire of James Bond and other big movies but the roles always lesser than the surrounding spectacle. 'The Offence' finds Connery in a stripped-down, rough little movie that pits his detective against the late Ian Bannen's child molester suspect. The battle of wits breaks only to look at the cop's equally distressing marital life. Yes, a tough one to watch but marvel at the sheer power of Connery's performance as the driven yet ambivalent detective. If you're a Connery fan, or just a lover of good acting, check this out.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "You Think You're Having Me?", June 26, 2008

By 

The JuRK (Our Vast, Cultural Desert) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Offence ( Something Like the Truth ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ] (DVD)

Long before Sean Connery accepted the Best Supporting Actor for 1987's THE UNTOUCHABLES, he'd already proven himself to not only be one of the 20th Century's biggest movie stars but an actor capable of immersing himself in a role with the best.

I'll always believe that it was Connery's conviction as an actor that helped make the James Bond movies resonate so strongly with the Sixties moviegoing public. No matter how outrageous the situation, you believed it because he believed it. He quickly grew bored with the role as the scripts began imitating themselves and sought other roles to better define himself as an actor, not a movie star (as if being one of the biggest movie stars in the world was such a bad thing!).

Connery's talents are all on display in THE OFFENCE, a Sidney Lumet-directed film about a cop who goes over the edge. The film takes you into the tortured mind of a police detective who's seen too much, a big man not quite big enough for the corrosive overall effects of hunting down a child killer.

Most of the film takes place in an interrogation room as Connery plays a cat-and-mouse verbal game with a suspect who may or may not be his man. The result is fatal to the suspect and fatal to Connery's psyche.

It doesn't look like this film is available on DVD yet in the United States but it has been showing on cable TV channels. It's well worth watching to see great performances so check it out if you get the chance.

I think my favorite Connery performance is THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING in 1975. Bottom line is: he's always good. In THE OFFENCE, he's great.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep and unconscious criminal roots, November 3, 2008

By 

Jacques COULARDEAU "A soul doctor, so to say" (OLLIERGUES France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Offence ( Something Like the Truth ) [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - United Kingdom ] (DVD)

A small English film, well done and many other things, but the interest is not in the plot because we know from the very start who the rapist is. But the whole interest of the film is how the rapist does not know he is one, does not remember his crime and how his memory is going to come back little by little, though it will take him killing another - at least - man who managed to see through his official innocence. That shows how being a rapist is a very special crime. It is a secret crime that happens in the deepest depth of one's mind and of which the rapist himself is not conscious, though his subconscious, when it takes over to guide him through the crime, is extremely well organized and makes him do exactly what is necessary for him to succeed and to go through it without any problem or opposition. This subconscious is also strong enough to make him forget about the crime entirely so that he does not have to hide anything since he does not know any more, though he does not need his torch in the night to go back to the girl in the woods, and her reaction confirms in our eyes the fact he is the rapist even if he is trying to comfort her now. And yet that subconscious is trying to hide the tracks of the crime by looking for an easy scapegoat who would in a way or another accept, willy-nilly or unwillingly if necessary, to be the surrogate rapist. The transfer of another transfer, and that is the beginning of the fall of the rapist because he will become a criminal of his own. And we are set wondering how it is possible for a criminal of that type to mislead his surrounding co-workers or even relatives and acquaintances into believing he is an innocent good man. How can crime hide so well and so deep in a man's deeper layers of his personality? Apart from that tricky psychological side of the film, it is rather simple and uneventful. But just try to imagine how he is going to realize he is the rapist and how the people around him are going to realize he is the rapist. And we can only have a flitting picture of what he did to the various witnesses or people who are in his way to leveling the witnesses into the ground. Quite a bloody trail.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines