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Sir, you will have my unconditional Kickstarter support the moment you ask it.
Some thoughts upon reflection. Perhaps my mild distaste at the use of rape in the introductory sequence somewhat skewed my impression of its thematic coherence. I'm wondering if the first scene should become a mirror of the last scene -- the Triads subjects of Bashkim's impersonal, dutiful torture, the same way that Alex will be eventually. A pair of bookends that foreshadow and then depict the outcome of Alex's willingness to sell his soul.
I'm not sure if such a connection comes off as classically liberal, the individual morally degraded by his own choice and accepting death as the outcome of a rational decision, or socialist in the sense that the conflation of position of gang members in the first scene and a "formerly innocent" man in the last scene suggests the weight of circumstance. The notion of true evil is sort of deflected by Bashkim's recognition that his own actions are compulsory, os maybe it's the latter. But either way, I think it's a thought that could guide the film's particular handling of "How far would you go?"
This also lends some weight to the final twist in the sense that early on, if the story unfolds as you originally intended and Alex witnesses Bashkim doing something bad and is scared off, Bashkim's own life is in fact what puts his son in danger -- Alex would have just asked, and Bashkim would have just said yes, if Bashkim weren't a gangster.
As well, thinking back on the script now, I realize that nowhere was I more engaged than the moment that the impromptu surgery starts on the poor kid, and in particular, what I liked was that the moment was really captured in the script of, "Oh shit, it's happening now!" -- that peculiar feeling when you realize that you've started doing something you weren't ready to be doing.
I was thinking one thing that might be neat is if we saw this same surgery performed beforehand in a professional, medical setting; the calm, ordered imagery in the hospital setting ground in our minds for a contrast once we see how the surgery on the kid plays out. Another similar idea that I had was that it might be cool if Alex tried to talk the kid (and Bashkim, and himself) through the surgery, in that calm, clinical way that doctors talk you through things. It might be a neat contrast, and it would be cool to see Alex unable to hold it together.
Sorry if that's a bit rambly, gotta run now but hopefully somewhat clear.
First off, I like the main antagonists. Albanians. Bashkim seems like the type of guy you don't wanna f with under any circumstances. Bull, Ferret and later on, Snout, his three trusty henchmen. Good names, kinda makes it easier to depict them.
I can already tell James is better as a character than before. When you opened with the first 10 on the 1WC, I, truth be told, couldn't give a rat's backside about whether he lived or died due to the way he spoke, uttering "F" and "C" like they were common phrases to a father that only cared about his well being. This time around, he's dormant, much more likeable and, truth be told, scared to hell but strong.
I like that Ferret is an intelligent antagonist. How he takes Alex's phone after Alex calls himself "Adam" and dials Marjorie rather than simply NOT doing that like so many other antagonists I've seen in the past. He now knows Alex's home address, where he works, has Bashkim's son's file and knows Alex is after something. This introduces a severe danger to his chances of success.
Mickey and Terry, ah, British gangsters. I'm guessing Danny Dyer and Tamar Hassan wouldn't mind playing those two. That's who I saw when I was reading that part. Definitely has the feel of a good British Thriller Flick with the cuss words and violence coming out of this thing. That's not bad. I actually enjoy British Thrillers.
I like that Alex is HUMAN in this, not some f'ing machine. That beatdown proved that Alex really isn't the type of guy that can do any of the stuff he needs to do to save his son from dying in pain. If he can't take on two British Gangsters unarmed, then how the HELL is he gonna fight the Albanian Mafia?! Congratulations for making him human as it provides many questions going forward. Like, Alex is alone, Bashkim has at least 3 named Mercenaries at his disposal. He got beat down by 2 men, so how's he gonna take on the rest, even with a gun. I doubt he's a crack shot. Hell, the guy can barely defend himself. Talk about a small fish in the ocean.
You definitely set up a protagonist with a lot to lose and a lot to prove. He's gonna need training or HELP if this is gonna come off. Anything else, like him going in guns blazing and surviving, won't feel natural considering everything that's happened up to this point (pg.45). And considering he only has a day or two to do it, I doubt he's gonna receive expert level gun training in that time. Kidnap is his only option, but I'm kinda doubting he could even do that at this point.
Forget that last. A man with everything to lose is one that can't be judged. He really went all out with that home invasion. Managing to overpower a woman and Bashkim as if he was trained to do so, which the prior paragraph insists he's not.
I find myself asking how the hell Alex is gonna get out of this situation when he's surrounded six-ways from Sunday by men with guns. Not only this, but him getting out of this alive is a shot in the dark unless he kills one of them. Not there yet, but it's growing very exciting, very thrilling and exceptionally thought-provoking.
Okay, finished.
All in all this was a great read. Alex developed well. Bashkim was a good antagonist. The ending felt natural and how ironic that Bashkim would've let Alex do what he had needed if he just asked. Makes him feel stupid, but I get the point here.
The car chase was thrilling and exciting. It'd make for quite the ride if this was filmed. The moment Alex kills the innocent civilian was certainly something I didn't see coming. But a man with everything to lose will go to great lengths to ensure the safety of the one he needs to save, and doing this leads to casualties, as was the case.
Excellent start to the 7WC scripts. You have a great concept here. Some typos here or there, nothing I'll mention as I'm sure you likely noticed them yourself, or others have spoke about them already.
The dialogue is good, at times it's a little cliche. But for a 7WC that's to be expected. My own suffers from the same issue.
Congratulations for completing this 7WC, Scar. I certainly enjoy your writing style and would be happy to read more from you in the future.
This probably is the worst possible time what with the OWC coming up, but I've put a re-write up taking into account a lot of the suggestions made in the excellent reviews.
Once again...I really appreciate the time that people spent and the depth they went into with their reviews. I still have a few I owe, I think. Will get to them in due course.
Larry's gone, there's a couple of new scenes. I have changed the part where he kills the woman, driving.
Not sure if I should have done, or not.
If anyone has time to give it a run through, or would like me to have a look at their script in return, let me know. Want to get it boxed off to send for coverage and to some comps, then to some Production companies.
As I'm determined to get back into the habit of reading, digesting and decontrusting screenplays, this seemed like a good place to start. I see you wrote this for a time-limited challenge, but it's a rewrite so I feel no need to hold back! I kid.
Two things to start:
- I think you've got a really strong premise (I'm more and more agreeing with the opinion that 90% of scripts are doomed before the writer even writes fade in: ) - I'm struggling with a quandary: I thought that the execution was rushed and the story massively stretched out, and yet, I couldn't stop reading!
I can’t remember what you’re like with criticism. I’m going to pick this apart, but the reason is I feel your script falls in the 10% that ISN’T dead before page 1, because I like your hook. I’m just not a massive fan of the execution. But all that can be fixed - while you can’t un-bad a premise.
I’ll chop this up into Plot, Character, Dialogue and Suggestions, if that’s okay. I’m going to break Rule 1 and try and re-write your script for you when you didn’t ask me to (again, it’s because I like your idea!). Most of this can be dismissed if you like what you have the way it is. But hope some of this is useful.
PLOT
My main problem with this the structure, really. It didn't feel to me like a fully fleshed out story. After a strong start, once we get out of Act 1 it’s basically it a series of stretched out sequences:
- Alex tracks down Baskhim, trails him and is caught (p. 20-34) - interlude: Alex learns just how sick James is and resolves to do Something Crazy (p. 34-38 ) - Alex tries to get a gun (p. 39-50) - Alex goes to get Defrim’s bone marrow (p. 50-68 ) - Alex races back to the hospital before James dies (p. 69-84)
So basically after page 38 it’s 10 minutes of him trying to get a gun, and then two back to back nearly 20 minute extended action sequences. There was a line I read in a review of a film once where it said the problem was the director tried to ‘entertain us to death’ - that sounds like a compliment, but I think the point was that it was so relentless, so ON IT all the time that it all sort of merged into one massive pounding din. In terms of actual STORY, it feels like you’ve dragged perhaps 20 minutes of action out to make it last for 50 pages. What’s on the page is exciting, but the actual plot feels thin
First things first: I’d cut pages 39-50. I don’t fully understand what you were trying to do here. If the idea was to say ‘this is what would ACTUALLY happen if a normal man were in this terrible situation’, then that’s fair enough. But so much of the action is on a sort of action hero level (the house under siege section is a bit Skyfall, the chase just as highly-pitched) that Alex Grant didn’t feel normal enough (I’ll come to his character later) for me to relate to his mundane struggles as a normal bloke in this alien world. Really, this 11 pages could be summarised on one index card: Alex arms himself. But in terms of a story beat, you could achieve this in half a page by him having inherited a shotgun from his father, and driving home and smashing it out of its glass case. Every page that isn’t Alex Grant v. Bashkim Demechi is a wasted page, in my opinion. 39-50 is an 11 page diversion you could tick off in a page or less.
I appreciate you added a ticking clock to the second half which made things Very Dramatic, but I couldn’t fully buy into it, I’m afraid. Partly this might be my own medical ignorance. What is James dying of? And how can one single injection of bone marrow immediately pluck him back from death’s door? As Alex was destroying large chunks of Surrey and West London and mowing down pedestrians on Oxford Street, I felt curiously unengaged as I just thought ‘well even if he gets there, surely it’s too late anyway?’ Simpson says ‘it’s not a silver bullet’ - but you sort of suggest it is, an InstaCure where every single second matters. Maybe that’s medically accurate, but it didn’t seem very believable to me.
Finally, you set up this whole Albanians vs. Triads subplot you never do anything with. I like your opening, but it’s ultimately a bit of a red herring as apart from kidnapped prostitutes / dancers it doesn’t lead anywhere. You hint at a backstory where Bashkim has been in dispute with the Triads:
Quoted Text
BASHKIM It didn’t need to come to this. You should have accepted our offer.
GAN REG KANG Do you know who we are? This is Triad territory, do you think you can...
BASHKIM We know, we just don’t care.
and then apart from one line where Bashkim says ‘you’re not Triads’, this is never mentioned again. Feels like you leave a thread dangling there.
CHARACTERS
Bashkim is a really good antag, a nasty, nasty piece of work. You introduce him well, and his line ‘We know, we just don’t care.’ is kickass. I was loving it on page 3. The three henchmen are good, too. Tick for all of that.
Alex Grant, however, I wasn’t really interested. Your antag is WAY more interesting than your protag, and that to me is a problem. Perhaps it’s because we didn’t spend long enough with him at the start. Apart from a few minutes with James, we never get to see normal Alex - for the rest of the script he’s at a million miles an hour, so frantic that it’s hard to expand on the character beneath.
Also, is he a normal man, or isn’t he? If he is, I didn’t believe in him. He goes from normal to Liam Neeson Taken, without much of an arc. i could never work out whether I was supposed to be amazed a normal man could go this far, or just seeing him as an action hero. He’s not Richard Kimble, because he’s in car chases and fight sequences. He handles the action too well to be just a bloke. An easy way to fix that is to give him the right background. John McClane is a cop who has to step up. Bryan Mills is ex-CIA. Del Spooner (I, Robot) is an ex-cop. If he was an ex-Army medic who had to go back to the type of behaviour he thought he’d left behind in order to save his son, then I’d believe him when he started kicking ass and taking names.
That’s another general point, actually. While the primary goal is clear - stop James dying - I didn’t really feel like anything was at stake personally for Alex. By which I mean while the fact that it’s his son gives him the motivation to go that far, that relationship isn’t particularly strong. There’s a half-story that he couldn’t save James’ mother and so is trying to assuage that guilt, but that gets a couple of lines of dialogue and that’s it. I’ll throw you a couple of suggestions that I wonder if you could introduce in the Suggestions section.
One other thing: I think you should make Doctor Simpson a woman. You have a lot of men in the script (Alex, James, Bashkim, Bull, Ferret, Snout, all the gang members, Defrim), but the only women are prostitutes, a nurse, the house keeper / nanny and Bashkim's girlfriend, and of those only two get names. I feel it would balance things up to at least make Simpson a woman - could James also become a daughter? It all feels unnecessarily unbalanced atm.
DIALOGUE
Your action writing is good - vivid, clear, flows well. Your dialogue, though, I felt didn't match up to that. Quite often it was devoid of subtext. Characters said exactly what they mean, in a way that felt quite unnatural.
A good example is the scene between Alex and James towards the start. There's a good conflict in that scene, opposing wants: James wants to drop out of school and go travelling as he fears he doesn't have long left, Alex doesn't want him to as he's in denial about the severity of his son's condition. That's a really good starting point for the scene, as they're in direct opposition. It's also a really good way of giving us the necessary exposition about James. BUT the dialogue is pretty on-the-nose. You spell things out so explicitly in dialogue that the tension is lost.
Generally, there are lots of moments when you make a character say something that could either be shown, or left unsaid.
For instance, when Alex says:
Quoted Text
ALEX I failed Rose, and I’ve failed James. What’s the point in being a Doctor if you can’t save your own family?
I’m not sure that needs saying. If a man in white coat is sitting there talking about his wife and son, we get it. You can lose the last line.
SUGGESTIONS
Right, this is where I pick up on particular moments that bothered me, and what I think could be done.
To fix Alex Grant’s ‘is he a normal man or an action hero’ issue, I’d simply give him a military / action-based background. You’ve made him old enough that he could have left that life behind. Maybe he’s an ex-Army medic, so he knows how to handle himself but he quit all that. With James, I’d love to see a distance in their relationship that needs resolving. I’m going to go back to Taken again. What I think that film got right was the relationship between father and daughter. They were estranged, and so while it was primarily a film about an ex-CIA agent rescuing a woman from captivity, on an emotional, personal level it was about a man determined to right the wrongs in his relationship with his daughter.
Maybe Alex wasn’t around for much of James’ childhood. He only took over looking after James after the mother died, so he doesn’t know James that well. So when James looks like he may die, that’s robbing him of the chance to finally get to know his son. In saving him, Alex is also saving the chance to make that connection, and finally proving himself as a father. That would give it an emotional stake I feel is currently lacking.
The connection between the Grants and Demechis was too convenient for my liking. He runs a database search, and the only match happens to be the son of this maniac. This may sound absurd given everything Alex goes through, but for me the easiness of this initial revelation (a computer finds it for him) means the rest doesn’t have a proper basis. It’s not the convenience in itself that troubles me but how we go from ’14 million donors and no match’ to ‘hey look I found one’ simply by running the right search, even if it does break the law (which, by the way, seems to have no personal cost for our protag).
This is where I drift into ‘talking about a script you didn’t write’ territory. In my mind, a lot more of the story should take place in the hospital. Perhaps Bashkim or his son is brought in to the hospital where Alex Grant works. James is already there, on his last legs. Alex is the doctor who treats one of them, and while running tests he realises something amazing: he’s finally found the donor his son needs. But by the time he realises this, the donor has gone. So Alex must kidnap the donor, bring him back to the hospital, and do the transplant before his son dies with the rest of the gang on his tail. It’d be more of a ‘hospital under siege story’, but I feel that would work better than a very extended chase sequence, which is what currently takes up most of the second half of the script.
CONCLUSION
This is my first review since coming back, and I’ve run out of steam. I hope there’s something useful in there. To reiterate, I think you’ve got the kernel of a good idea here, and a great antag. You just need to boost your protag, raise the emotional stakes, and I think come up with a new plot.
Or not. This is YOUR screenplay, after all. If you like what you have, as I say take what seems useful, and discard the rest.
Thanks for the read, Rick - great practice to get my eye back in, and despite all of the above as I said at the start it was a quick, compelling read. All the best.
Sort of agree with the diagnosis, if not the cure.
I'm not usually one to defend my scripts, I just take or leave the advice. In this case I'll explain a couple of things, so you can see where I'm going from.
Ultimately what this is supposed to be about is a normal man who has lost the love of his life and is now faced with losing his son. He has a binary choice...to let that happen, or do the one thing he can do about it. Which may save his son, but will lose him his job, his freedom, and most probably his life.
It's about how deep you are willing to go to save the ones you love. How far.
Alex is not supposed to be an action hero, he's just someone who is desperate. He only turns to action when all options have been exhausted and his only real physical actions are kicking a door, and then overpowering someone who he has partly sedated.
It's something that I know an actor could portray comfortably, that feeling of on the edge desperation.
Obviously that's not coming across.
The idea that he's some military guy who just happens to have access to weapons just doesn't for it for me.
I do agree with you that it feels it needs more emotional stakes. It's just hard to see how to do it, without starting at his wife's death or having disruptive flashbacks to her. I tried to show he's been estranged from his son (emotionally rather than physically), as you suggest, but again it's pretty hard with him lying in a bed, dying.
A hospital siege would essentially be the same as the part in the house where he's performing the illegal operation. It kind of writes you into a corner. He's stuck in one room, operating whilst the mafia try to get at him. The Police would turn up and that would be that.
I might have another look at having Bashkim and his son turn up at the hospital. I considered it, but dismissed it as being far too convenient. The one match just happening to turn up at exactly the point he needs seemed a lot more far-fetched than searching a database of thousands. It's more dramatic, though.
The Triad subplot has been mentioned before. From my perspective it's hard to fix The story is not about Gangland Politics, but about a man trying to save his son. Ultimately the Albanians in the story are engaged in a planned take-over of the sex trafficking Industry in Britain, as they are in real life. It's an ongoing thing, and will be forever. We see a vignette of something we presume will just continue. Even if I go back to it for another scene, it wouldn't resolve anything...it's just an ongoing reality of the gangland battle for control. I don't really know what to do about that.
Of course from a film viewpoint it's there to be entertaining, to provide some action and set up the obstacle for the protag.
James is dying of aplastic anemia. Severe cases can only be cured by a bone marrow transplant. Without it your body stop produces the proper blood cells and your body eventually goes into shock and you die. There would be a window where the body is starting to die, but you could still be saved with the transplant. This is where James is...he needs a transplant ASAP or he'll have gone too far and there will be no way back. It may take him two weeks to die, but if he doesn't get the injection right now, he definitely won't survive.
So it's a race to get him the injection before that window of opportunity to save him closes. It's sort of manipulative the way I've done it, deliberately increasing the tension and making it as though James life is on the line at that very moment (when in reality he's probably a week or two from death)...but there's nothing in it that's actually untrue. Fits are common at that stage.
Better a plausible impossibility than an implausible possibly, though, they say. Maybe this is a demonstration of that.
Think what I'll do is have a go at tying in the Triad story-line with the Alex/Bashkim story.
A previous reviewer suggested something similar. Have Bashkim ask Alex to kill a Triad in exchange for Defrim's marrow.
I thought it required too much of a re-write at that stage, but it might fit in nicely at that problematic stage where he's looking for a gun (which definitely goes on for too long).
Structurally that makes more sense and whatever happens will perhaps be more dramatic.
Hey Scar, I don't have a whole lot of time to read scripts anymore, but I do devote my time to the ones that stand out. I tried reading Bone Deep, but I stopped on page 1 after you started us off with "we see." I'm sorry, but I'm a jerk-off and I just had to put the script down after that.
Kidding. I read to about page 35. You had already lost me at 5 with the line "A nice place in a nice neighborhood" -- c'mon, man, that's just lazy writing -- but, despite that little bump in the road, I pushed on.
Is there any way you could make that scene with Alex and James less out in the open? It's too OTN and just smacks us right in the face. Also, have you thought of making Dad sound less of a complete and total douche? His son is dying and he won't loosen up and let him experience life? Instead, he forces him to dredge on with his college courses? What an asshole. If my mom pulled that shit with me, I would loathe her for the rest of my life, even in my next one. It definitely fucked things up for me, because now I don't like the guy -- and that's a problem.
When you have Alex speak about his wife to the gangster, then say the line
What can I say without sounding like a cliche?
You read my mind exactly. Were you being funny or something? It's almost as if you knew these "forced sympathy" lines were going to sound blatantly desperate and OTN. If you're going to go that route, ditch the hollow lines such as "she completed me" and "she was my everything" and GET SPECIFIC.
In Good Will Hunting, there's a few parts where Robin Williams talks about his wife and all the little things that he loved about her, like how she used to fart in her sleep -- and that's one of the fondest memories he has of her. Matt Damon doesn't just say "oh yeah, my father used to beat me." He gets into specific detail about it, saying that his father "used to put a belt and a wrench on the table and said choose," and Damon always chose the wrench because "fuck him, that's why." You need to get detailed like that. Precise. Specific. Learn about your characters a little bit more and try to craft them like a real person instead of just copping out with stuff like "she completes me. She's my everything." You can't do stuff like that on the fly. It won't stick. And it most definitely won't fly with some readers, including me.
Gonna suggest that maybe you change James to a 7 year old boy, or better yet, a 7 year old girl. I think we would sympathize and care for the child more as opposed to a dark, moody seventeen year old kid who likes to listen to dark, moody music.
As I said earlier, I stopped reading Bone Deep around page 35, and I'll tell you why, and believe me, if I knew a nicer word, I would use it -- but these pages, this story -- it was boring. Sure, it opens with a bang, you could say, but it's a "false bang", an opening scene that's 1) only there so it can attempt to grab our attention because what follows isn't very new or different or entertaining and 2) a scenario/opening scene that we have seen a zillion times already. I'm positive if you racked your brain hard enough, you could come up with something better than a bunch of thugs rushing a happy endings massage parlor (hell, I already saw a couple of these segments on the current season of Sons of Anarchy. I can even recall The Sopranos has a similar scene, too). It reads -- and most of the gangster stuff does -- as if you're just copying and pasting what you see in the movies.
The rest, I have seen before. Hero dad racing against time to find a transplant for his kid. I actually read a script on here a few months back (Code Black) with a similar story idea as yours, but it was handled better -- despite still having a few (minor) flaws. I'd recommend you giving it a read if you haven't already.
So you have an opening that doesn't spark, and you have a story that's been there, done that, which is boring -- with characters that are unlikable. What could you do to make this different, even in the slightest bit? Just off the top of my head, instead of having the father be the one who's desperate to save James, why don't you make the father not give a shit (for whatever reason - but make sure it's not a tacked on reason) and maybe it's James' girlfriend who decides to step up. That sounds a little bit more interesting and different to me. In every one of these scripts, you always see the same old shit: the dad trying to find a transplant. Well, in this scenario, the dad doesn't give a shit about his own flesh and blood, so somebody else has to do it. I'd WANT to read that as opposed to just opening some random feature on SS, hoping to find a good story.
Now I know it looks like I didn't like anything about Bone Deep, but I did. I liked 3 things. I liked that you incorporated goals, stakes, and urgency. All too often I read amateur scripts that wander because the characters are holding union meetings because nobody needs or wants anything right now or it's their ass because nothing is on the line. When you have a protagonist with a strong goal and he needs to achieve it RIGHT NOW, you tend to have a story that moves along. Now, you have these 3 things (goals, stakes, urgency), which is good (I like to harp on them a lot), because if they were lacking big time, this script would have sunk with me big time. So those factors greatly helped you out and made it a better read for me, but since I didn't connect, like, or was pulling for any of the characters AND because this just felt like a copy-and-paste retread, I have to say that this was not my cup of joe.
However, I'd be more than glad to take a look at your next draft, if it's a page 1 rewrite.
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