Synopsis
The Onion Field (1979) is a true-crime drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Harold Becker adapts Joseph Wambaugh's nonfiction account of a case that rattled the LAPD for years.
Two small-time crooks pull over a plainclothes patrol car, drive the two officers out to a deserted field near Bakersfield, and open fire. One cop (Ted Danson) is shot dead; his partner Karl Hettinger (John Savage) walks away and spends the rest of the film drowning in survivor's guilt. James Woods is electric as the colder, more calculating of the two killers. Then the second half kicks in — a trial that drags on for the better part of a decade.
Becker has no interest in action. He's after something harder: how legal loopholes can stall an open-and-shut murder into endless appeals. Watch for a young Christopher Lloyd in a bit part. Bleak, scoreless, and built on fact, it's for viewers who like their crime stories without varnish. Stream The Onion Field (1979) online on iFILM.
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