Johnsons reaction when finding the girl (spoiler)

Of course, that's the WHOLE POINT of the movie! How can you have watched it several times and missed that?!?

Take a look at Johnson's face when the other rescuer's discover him with the girl. He looks panicked as if he's guilty of something. He doesn't technically do anything wrong, but the position he's in is close enough to the attacker's that he identifies with the rapist somewhat (he is clearly stifling some serious bad urges) During the final interrogation scene, they show us that he imagines the girl smiling and has entertained disturbing thoughts that are very close to what we imagine the rapist would have thought. It's definitely strongly implied that he identifies too closely with the rapist which helps send him over the edge. I think it's meant to be vague at first because he hasn't admitted those thoughts yet (until the interrogation)

Brent Allard
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This is a pivotal scene. Johnson's encounter with the young girl begins to reveal to us what Johnson can't yet acknowledge to himself. It is the transition from having to follow the progress of an ill tempered, macho cop investigating sex crimes to the gradual dawning on us that there is something very wrong with our hero.

I think one of the reasons why Lumet depicts this so ambiguously is that Johnson's inner turmoil is not revealed too quickly, and instead plants a seed of doubt in our mind that turns into genuine dread and anxiety during the claustrophobic scenes of Baxter's interrogation. We should feel hateful towards Baxter and mentally urge Johnson to break him down, if necessary beating a confession out of him. Instead we find ourselves oppressed by the Detective's physical abuse and ranting, and share the alarm of the apparently terrified Baxter once he realises he is unable to escape Johnson's increasingly bizarre behaviour.

How successful this is depends on how much you buy into the subtle change of roles between the two characters in which Baxter starts to posit the question we've been entertaining, ie. out of the two is it the cop who is the bigger pervert?

For some the re-occurring flashbacks and rosy tinted image of the young girl was a superfluous, over dramatised device in the same way that Lumet's constant use of the flashback forces on us a contrived artiness where none is necessary. I tend to disagree as it reinforces our charitable view that whatever Johnson is going through, in particular during the interview with Superintendent Cartwright, it does not give him any sense of pleasure or satisfaction. We begin to see another, deeper reason why this aggressive man carries so much rage. As the girl's slightly sexualised image begins to claim Johnson's thoughts, he does his utmost to suppress the desires, forcing them back down to where ever the hell they came from.

One question has always nagged at me though. Should we really be taking it at face value that out of the entire search party Johnson, by pure chance, is THE one to find the girl?




"I'm staring at the abyss.I don't like the look of the abyss"

It reminded me of M and then Connery began to behave like him too. Fine conceit.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.

What I found so agonizingly disturbing about the scene in which Johnson finds the girl is that he didn't immediately ID himself to the girl as a police officer so as to allay her fears of further abuse/rape etc. I was close to yelling at the screen 'For Petes sake man, tell her you're a cop (in my best Connery/Bond imitation) !!"
If you notice, his left hand wanders down around her left breast also and he doesn't exactly rush to cover her with his coat.
The only reason I can think of for him not identifying himself immediately is that he wanted to see if he could calm her then proceed to molest her for a second or two before being spotted by the other officers. He wanted to see if she was in shock to the point that she might not remember what hes considering doing - he was evaluating her reaction to him. And this is why he didn't think to ID himself, like any normal, 'un-damaged' cop/person would do, because he was preoccupied with his thoughts of whether he could get away with it or not.
The movie is too tight, too perfect for Lumet and company not to have realized that a normal cop would have done his best to quell her fears by uttering what most would consider the most welcomed words one could hear in her situation:
"Its ok, I'm a policeman, you're safe, you are no longer in any danger..."
Thoughts ??