The Onion Field

After having some of his earlier works unacceptably altered, Wambaugh decided to write the screenplay himself for this version of his true story about two Los Angeles cops and the killers of one of them. Danson and Savage, a pair of plainclothes officers working the Hollywood beat, go after two lowlifes in a car, Woods and Seales, and are shocked when a gun is put in their faces. The cops are disarmed, kidnapped, and taken to a field some distance from Los Angeles where Danson is assassinated. Savage gets away, and with his accurate description the killers are soon nabbed. The rest of the picture concerns the judicial system and how it favors the felon over the vic...