Movie Analysis Essay on The Onion Field

Introduction

The 1979 movie, The Onion Field, is based on a 1963 true crime story where two Los Angeles policemen are kidnapped and murdered in cold blood (Maslin, 1979). The two policemen are both friends and long-serving detectives, Karl (played by John Savage) and Ian (played by Ted Danson). The two criminals, Jimmy and Greg, kidnap the detectives and take them to an onion field near Bakersfield. Greg shoots Ian dead, but Karl manages to get away. Jimmy and Greg are arrested and convicted of murder. They are both placed on the Death Row. Much of the film concerns with the years of legal proceedings that followed after the arrest of the duo as well as the emotional aftermath of the surviving officer. The surviving officer, Karl, is depicted as being guilty about the incident leading him to experience height loss, impotence, nightmares, weight loss, kleptomania and a tendency towards suicide. The courtroom drama is heightened by a complicated and has a new legal team with each trial. Greg knowingly studies the legal system and succeeds in delaying their execution and constantly tie up proceedings with appeals for years (Maslin, 1979).

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The Onion Field depicts a sad tale of a victim to both a crime and a criminal justice system with loopholes. There seems to be no hope for an audience that is familiar with the legal system and its abuse. The case drags ten years after the confessed kidnap murderers have been captured droning litigations on and on and never allowing surviving victims and relatives to forget. One of the prosecutors is quoted to have said, "The American system of justice is the laughing stock of the English Speaking world and incomprehensible to the rest of the world.". The cases pose a challenge to the legal system for allowing its members to pursue obfuscation, exhaustion and systematic contempt to make trial on the merits impossible instead of adjudication according to the rule of law.

Additionally, the system should not allow attacks on the prosecutor the jurors or even the bench on an irrefutable theory that time is on the side of the defendants. The movie is also illustrative of what such a crime and its aftermath, the dispensation of justice, do to a victim. Apart from the surviving officer Karl Hettinger experiencing guilt flowing solely from the survival he is also guilty of the realization that he had surrendered a fact to the police. The endless trials that were often repeated analyzed and criticized his morality. The outcome is the breakdown of Karl Hettinger's life.

The fact that Greg was an ex-convict and had committed crime just days after being released also points at loopholes in criminal justice' capital punishment (Warden, 2009). The Onion Field case is proof that the death penalty has not only failed as a deterrent but has caused murders. Smith and Greg may have thought they were being apprehended for a string of armed robberies they had committed hence their decision to disarm and kidnap the officers to eliminate evidence.

The only criticism is that the movie is based on a book Mr. Wambaugh and perhaps the tone might have been in defense of a friend and fellow officer (Maslin, 1979). However, the movie was successful in exposing the fissures in the criminal justice system that call for urgent attention and repair.

References

Maslin, J. (1979, September 19). Film: Wambaugh's 'The Onion Field.' Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1979/09/19/archives/film-wambaughs-the-onion-field.html

Warden R. (2009). Reflections on Capital Punishment. Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy, 4(2), 328-359. Retrieved from https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1040&context=njlsp