The Onion Field
Gritty true crime business, directed by Harold Sea Of Love Becker from the book by LAPD cop Joseph Wambaugh (who was also behind The New Centurions).
A pair of degenerates (James Woods and Franklyn Seales) kidnap then shoot a pair of cops (John Savage and Ted Danson) in a Californian onion field. Hilarity ensues. Savage does guilt, Woods does sociopathic, Seales does out-of-his-depth, Danson does bagpipes. Worth watching.
Flight 93
A not-as-good-as-United 93 TV movie about the hijacked 9/11 plane that ended up ploughing into the Pennsylvania countryside.
Whilst the Greengrass effort easily outpowers this version, there is some good character work amongst the passengers (and hijackers) onboard the doomed plane. Peter Markle directs efficiently.
Green Zone
Talking of Greengrass, here he brings the Bourne team back together for a Bourne-that-isn’t-Bourne, with Matt Damon a principled soldier in Baghdad who comes across vital evidence that the invasion of Iraq was undertaken on a false pretext! Astonishing.
Obviously very competently staged, just it doesn’t really pull together, either narratively or in terms of visceral thrills.
