The Offence

“After 20 years, what detective-sergeant Johnson has seen and done is destroying him.”

Detective Sergeant Johnson (Sean Connery) has spent twenty years on the force looking at what people do to children, and it has worn his patience down to nothing. When he gets Kenneth Baxter (Ian Bannen), a suspect in a string of assaults, alone in an interview room, Lieutenant Cartwright (Trevor Howard) is left to piece together what happened. Sidney Lumet keeps Johnson's rage and his marriage to Maureen (Vivien Merchant) at the same unbearable temperature.