It is a dramatic film adaptation of the 1959 play Becket or the Honour of God by Jean Anouilh made by Hal Wallis Productions and released by Paramount Pictures.

The film stars Richard Burton as Thomas Becket and Peter O'Toole as King Henry II, with John Gielgud as King Louis VII, Donald Wolfit as Gilbert Foliot, Paolo Stoppa as Pope Alexander III, Martita Hunt as Empress Matilda, Pamela Brown as Queen Eleanor, Siân Phillips, Felix Aylmer, Gino Cervi, David Weston and Wilfrid Lawson.

He becomes increasingly dependent on Becket, a Saxon commoner, who arranges these debaucheries when he is not busy running Henry's court.

In a burst of inspiration, Henry exercises his prerogative to pick the next Archbishop, and informs an astonished Becket that he is the royal choice.

Becket then travels to the Vatican, where he begs the Pope to allow him to renounce his position and retire to a monastery as an ordinary priest.

The barons worsen his mood by pointing out that Becket has become a folk hero among the vanquished Saxons, who are ever restive and resentful of their Norman conquerors.

His faithful barons hear this and proceed quickly to Canterbury, where they put Thomas and his Saxon deputy, Brother John, to the sword.

He had been informed of this error before his play was produced, but decided against correcting it because it would undermine a key point of conflict, and because "history might eventually rediscover that Becket was a Saxon, after all."

Becket is depicted as Henry's loyal "drinking pal", who assists him with illicit romantic entanglements and drunken hunting exercises, but who becomes saintly and responsible after his appointment as Archbishop.

Passing mention is made in the film of the Constitutions of Clarendon (simply as the "Sixteen Articles"); the struggle between Becket and Henry is boiled down to their conflict over Lord Gilbert's murder of the captive priest.

Henry's mother, Empress Matilda, died in 1167, three years before the treaty of Fréteval allowed Becket to return in England.

Henry appears to not have any respect for his mother and treats her as something of an annoyance, a rather drastic departure from what is generally held as historical fact.

Finally, at one point in the movie, Matilda complains that her gender was a major limiting factor in her life when in fact when she was an active military leader against Stephen of Blois during The Anarchy.