In the early 1970s, United Artists wanted Sean Connery back in the role of James Bond. Part of the deal that brought Connery back was UA agreeing to finance a pair of vanity projects for Connery, as long as the films didn’t cost much money. The Offence was the first of the pair, and the only one made.
From 1972, The Offence is an adaptation of the play This Story of Yours by John Hopkins. Hopkins was also brought aboard to pen the screenplay, with legendary director Sidney Lumet behind the camera.
In The Offence, Connery plays Detective Sergeant Johnson, a brutal, monster of a cop in England. Lately, the Sergeant and a team of detectives have been investigating the kidnappings and rapes of schoolchildren. The situation has gotten bad enough that Johnson and the others maintain a visual presence at a local school when it lets out, but that isn’t enough to prevent another young girl from being snatched. Later, as the police search nearby woods, it is Johnson who finds the young girl, terrified and laying in the mud, and who has to comfort her. This latest offense is just another in a litany of atrocities Johnson has witnessed in his 20 years as a police officer. His mind has been on the brink for some time, it appears, and after constables nab a suspect, Kenneth Baxter (Ian Bannen), Johnson snaps. During interrogation, Johnson beats the suspect to death, and has to account for his actions. Continue reading “The Offence”
Arnold Schwarzenegger hasn’t starred in a movie in ten years, since Terminator 3. In The Last Stand, his first major foray onto the silver screen since he ended his time as governor of California, Arnold (normally I’d refer to a person by their last name in an article, but I’m not going to subject myself to typing out Arnold’s last name more than once) plays Ray Owens, the sheriff of a small border town in Arizona. He’s a former narcotics cop from the mean streets of Los Angeles, and the wistful gazes with which he paints his little town in the opening scenes are evidence that he prefers this life in small town America to the one he left behind in the LAPD. It’s either that, or Arnold was just thrilled to be back in a starring role. I can’t tell, but it’s easy to picture the film’s director, Kim Jee-Woon, instructing Arnold to express his real feelings of satisfaction at being back in the spotlight for these scenes, as getting Arnold to display any emotional range at all is more difficult than flying the space shuttle.
Gritty New York City cop dramas are stylistically different from gritty Los Angeles cop dramas. It’s only partly due to setting. It would be hard for a film to ignore the differences between the coasts, but as far apart as the Eastern Seaboard and SoCal are, geographically and culturally, these differences are not what set cross-continental police flicks and television series apart. Just doing a loose word association, when I think NYC cop drama, my first thought is Law & Order and all of its iterations — police procedurals that follow detectives. After that I drift back to films from the past like The French Connection, Serpico, Fort Apache the Bronx, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Across 110th Street, even Bad Lieutenant. These films represent my own personal biases, but they all adhere to a palate of sorts that is broadly representative of New York City cop films.