The Offence is a 1973 British neo-noir crime drama film directed by Sidney Lumet starring Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Vivien Merchant, and Ian Bannen.

[1] Released by United Artists on January 11, 1973, the film received positive reviews from critics, who praised Connery and Bannen’s performances.

[7] The film was shot on a small budget of £385,000 in March and April 1972 in and around Bracknell, Berkshire, notably the Wildridings Mill Pond area and Easthampstead's Point Royal.

[8] The fight sequences between Connery and Bannen were choreographed, uncredited, by Bob Simmons, who had designed similar action scenes for the Bond films.

Due to the commercial failure of the film, United Artists opted out of the two-film financing deal they made with Connery and his production company.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "The emphasis is on character – and particularly, of course, that of Johnson, vividly drawn as a man of limited sensibilities, trained to stifle emotion, brutalised by years of police work, and mentally battered into a sado-masochist frenzy...

...The dialogue is too dense and sustained at too high a pitch for cinematic comfort and – no matter how much the camera may sniff restlessly around looking for fresh angles – the static, confined settings add to the general oppressiveness.

The acting, too, appears out of sorts, although the parts are meaty enough: Sean Connery's hard, reticent style suits Johnson the acerbic copper, but never suggests the brand of high-tension playing called for in the principal scenes; while both Vivien Merchant and Trevor Howard seem curiously subdued in their set-pieces.

Had he been able to inject the pace, crispness and audacity of his last film (The Anderson Tapes) into his latest, some of the underlying substance of John Hopkins' script might perhaps have emerged.

"[10] TV Guide wrote: "A powerful and complex performance by Connery is somewhat weakened by Lumet's typically stiff and stagey direction, which tends to sap the life out of the film.