I liked the idea and premise.  I thought the blackmail material was a little weak.  I think that Max, Chet and Del should have each done something more blackmail-worthy to motivate them.  Some of the dialog was a little long.  A thought - use flashbacks of each of the characters doing what they did or thought.  It wasn't clear to me when the four are talking at the end that it was raining.  It seemed the rain just suddenly blasted down.

Don

Premise: Excellent premise tailored perfectly to the remit.  8/10

Relation to the theme: Excellent and proper use of the boat, solid genre  8/10

Story: The blackmail thing was a let down as has already been mentioned. It just didn't hold together.

With a bit more work though this could be develped into a really tense, Pinteresque drama. It's got a great feel to it.

Despite some flaws in the writing this is easily one of the best in the batch and scores favourably for me because it has used the boat properly.  7/10

Although this isn't a "thriller," it has excellent potential to be an interesting story about possible skeleton backrgrounds and difficulty in really starting and keeping new "normal" lives and creating a clean sheet.

I'm speaking about giving these guys a messed up history that we know straight off is not a squeaky clean one.

Here goes the elaboration:

What I'm thinking is that these guys initially are introduced as family men, but suddenly my whole thought train was blown away at hearing them laugh when Alex says, "I killed my wife."

And I'm wondering.  How could they laugh?  Are they drug lord types or...?

If we firmly learn in the beginning something about the nature of these guys.  Perhaps a couple have been through the juvenile detention centers as kids or maybe even regular jail.  

What we might learn is that it's tough for some people to turn over new leafs.  Their desire for freedom maybe is a struggle; if we could see some kinds of flaws in their characters and that they are easily demonstrated by their actions; this would help us to believe that they would be having such a conversation.

Sorry, what is sotto voce? This is just underneath Chet.

I noticed you forgot to number the pages.

Some other typos:

>that he was divorced and [hat] should be had.

>but [eve] should be even

>and [it's be over] should be it would be over
you might want to have a colon mark after [it would be over: the nagging...] to set it off.

>from [mu kids]should be my kids

>[a s] should be as

When Chet speaks >No, I moved because of it... There are 9 lines which I feel need to be tightened up... talking about where Chet once lived and a guy in a type of group home etc...

Again, I think the worst thing about this is that the chance of four family man type guys all thinking darkly and having thoughts of murdering their wives is a bit hard on the suspension of disbelief.  But, I do think it can be made to work if the right elements are put in... like maybe they all grew up in the school of hard knocks and pretty much straightened themselves out, but...

Also, if you made one guy or two guys, "the good guys," who have beaten their past and aren't on the same page as the others and more of a war going on, that would be good.

Few more typos:

>[He'd better less go] should be let us

>[Yeah I could do it with it credit cards] should be do it with credit cards...

>[don't] the d is left behind on previous line
[
>Wait her] should be Wait here

>[Alex emerges with shovel] need to add [the]

>Add a ? after Alex asks them about rounding up 100,000

>He had [now] should be no choice

>[The three men each the safety] need to add [reach]

I think the ending works.  That tape still sitting on the boat.  Wonderful!

I'm just thinking that if you were to develop this into something longer, it would be interesting to have intercut scenes with "the wives."  What's their take on the whole relationship status.

And I think you could do a lot by actually "showing" the plan between Alex and his wife ahead of time.

What is it that was said and I don't remember by whom?  Show them the bomb that's going to explode first...

So don't keep it hidden.  I think you could really work this to your advantage.

I think Four Men in a Boat in this instance isn't thriller, but it could be.

I can imagine, husbands moving suspiciously around.  Mistrust.  Questions:  "What are you doing honey?  Didn't you do that last night?"

Boy oh boy.  Don't leave this idea sitting as a 15 page challenge.

Take this germ of an idea, water it faithfully, set it in the sun and see what happens.

Hope this helps.

Sandra

Concur with Sandra; I really liked this too, and it think it's a great concept that can be fleshed out to a higher level. Maybe have all the guys in some kind of "lets all try to get away with murder" scheme that of course, goes horribly wrong. I also liked the fact that it took place over in England, with lots of British Flavor tossed in (the petrol bomb, people who actually care about the World Cup). Jolly good.

Decent dialog about middle age and being married. Not real suspenseful or thrilling for me.

Well, the title fits it. It was four men on a boat. Four men rambling on like big babies about how horrible their lives are. This is basically just four wimps blubbering about how horrible their wives are and how horrible marriage is; all of which is their own fault for being pushovers.

The blackmail material was completely unbelievable.

This one doesn’t have a single character to care about. Maybe if there was a single character who took responsibility for himself, this script would have hope. They’re all selfish, unfeeling, uncaring jerks. Not one expresses an ounce of love or care for his family. As it is, it’s nothing but a gripe session for wimpy men who blame women for everything that’s wrong with their lives.


Breanne


[EDIT - Looking back, I realize I didn’t really say anything positive and I probably come off as harsh. Those were my honest thoughts from reading this. On a positive note; the writer’s not without talent. The dialogue is fairly believable. And the writer knows how to provoke reactions.

The whole story is just relentlessly negative. There isn’t a single character with any redeeming qualities. It wouldn’t be so bad to have four irredeemable jerks for main characters if there were other characters to balance things out - but they are the show here and without something to break up the endless stream of misogyny this comes off as nothing more than a misogynistic rant.

There’s no hero. There’s no main character. There really aren’t even any victims. It’s just four bottom dwelling villains feeding off each other.]

Technical Review
Well laid out.

No page numbers (but then I forgot that in my script too).

There were typos galore (page 2, ‘Dell’ instead of ‘Del’; page 3, missing question mark at the bottom; page 8, Max’s speech has ‘hat’ instead of ‘that’; page 9, Max’s second speech has three typos in it; page 9, Del’s first speech has two typos in it; page 11, ‘less’ instead of ‘let us’; page 12, ‘her’ instead of ‘here’ )

Story Review
A nice story, although perhaps requiring too much of a suspension of disbelief to totally work. There were some lovely twists (page 3, the ‘murder revelation’) and the moment when Alex comes back to his friends.

I guess that Chet was American? His dialogue was peppered with Americanisms like ‘block’ and ‘truck’. The others spoke of ‘mates’ and being ‘skint’, so I assumed that they were English. In fact, the setting confused me. Was it England? America? It was only when I realised that the Thames was mentioned that I knew where the action was happening. It might be good to state that Chet is American – otherwise, because of the US and UK mix, readers may be wondering where this is happening.

A good thriller that I enjoyed reading. Thanks for that!

It wasn't bad.  I liked the concept.  I think it suffered from not taking the concept far enough.  The blackmail was a let down after the build up.  The stakes needed to be higher.  The other issue I had with this was the large amount of dialogue.  So much of this script was people chatting.