The Onion Field John Savage, James Woods, Franklyn Seales Director: Harold Becker
Ex-policeman Joseph Wambaugh once told a reporter that everything he wrote stemmed from real life. 'I cannot write a novel, a script, or anything else without interviewing dozens of cops,' he said.
It shows. Witness The Onion Field, the Wambaugh-scripted adaptation of his 1973 true-life tale of a murder-kidnapping that had happened a decade before. The film, directed by thriller specialist Harold Becker, is DNA-swab real and hauntingly topical because, even now, the case's implications rumble on.
The film spotlights the routine investigation of two shadowy figures by LA plainclothes police officers Karl Hettinger (John Savage) and Ian Campbell (Ted Danson). One suspect - disturbed ex-con Greg Powell (James Woods, far right) - is a pushy psychopath with a hair-trigger temper. The other - his sidekick Jimmy Smith, aka Jimmy Youngblood ( Franklyn Seales) - is a dimwitted petty thief and real-life product of a 13-year-old mother.
Panicking, Powell - ever the crackpot - pulls a gun on the officers and decides to kidnap them. Despite misgivings, in his usual weak way Smith complies with Powell's decision.
Powell duly coerces the police into a deserted onion field in Bakersfield, California, and shoots Campbell dead. An awful lot of drama over a broken brake-light stoppage.