MOVIE · 1979
The Onion Field
CrimeDrama126 min
In 1963 Los Angeles, a routine traffic stop turns into a kidnapping and the murder of a police officer in the onion fields outside Bakersfield, leaving Detective Hettinger as the surviving witness. John Savage is the shaken cop, carrying survivor’s guilt as the case drags into arguments over legal loopholes, justice, and capital punishment. Opposite him, James Woods’s Greg Powell and Franklyn Seales’s Jimmy Youngblood are the two men at the center of the crime, their capture only beginning a longer legal battle. The film follows both the investigation and the toll the killing takes on the partner left behind.
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