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These were some torturous 9 pages. I have done the same once. A long torture scene just for the sake of torture. People hated it. I think I know why this felt looooong and uninteresting though. While reading your script, I started thinking about that Bond film where Craig is tied naked to a chair and the the Russian tortures him. That was a very memorable scene. Not just for the visuals, but there was some mental sparring there too which is why it worked. There is none of that here. Nothing that reveals anything about either character = I don't care. It feels empty. Change the dialogue into something interesting instead of the Prisoner just pleading to stop the whole time.
It's not so much that a character is simply called PRISONER and another CAPTOR. It's the fact that for three pages they are, in the narrative..."prisoner" and "captor". For the first page, "prisoner" is refferred to repeatedly as "He" - accurate, yes. Overusing the pronoun? yes. Because "prisoner" and "captor" are known only by thier function, this disconnects me as I read.
Which is why I'm done by 3. Sorry.
Congrats on trying the OWC. PS Ever see Death and The Maiden? Extremities? How about a few minutes of Taken? You could have made things more interesting.
This one was done in by two things: First off, the victim’s dialogue is just plain uninteresting. It’s the kind of dialogue I call filler. Occasionally it’s unavoidable. Here, it goes on and on. You already have a jaded premise. If anything else is jaded, then I think a piece like this is sunk.
The second issue is the ending. The twist doesn’t make sense. Why would a criminal organization test a member three days after the crime is committed? They should have checked the person out before the crime. But then mutilating him before the crime wouldn’t make sense either. Hurting him because he had already talked would make sense but would also be jaded. The ending here comes off as contrived just to have a fresh twist. And it really doesn’t work.
Also, I was let down a little by the titular question. I thought the title and logline sounded interesting. I expected the question to be unusual. I thought the story was going to have a bizarre quality and I found that tantalizing. As soon as I read the question, I realized this was just a standard gangster torture scene. Ultimately, I think the whole story has too much of a “been there” feel.
There is some good writing here. If the dialogue had been more compelling, the scene would have actually been pretty intense. Better dialogue and a better ending could make this into a good script. It’s already got the plus points of being cheap to produce, which is what really gets most shorts produced.
I didn't enjoy this very much. The torture scenes got tiresome and were not original - as he was pulling items from the bag I was groaning. I half expected a pair of pliers and some nipple clamps. Cigar cutters, blowtorches and a gun. We see them all the time used as implements of persuassion. This felt like a scene in a much bigger movie. The double spaced action paired with a repetitive use of "He" made it an uncomfortable read. Ok the good points - The prisoner's suffering was fairly well written and there was a couple of wince-out-loud moments. With the right dialogue this could be on the edge of being very Tarantino (a good thing IMO). Good Luck Daz
Meh. The ending is what did this one in for me. Seems a little too out there and very illogical.
While reading, I was thinking the same thing Greg was. This guy's getting fingers sliced off and burned with a blow torch, but he doesn't want Mr. Severus to kill him.
I also think that the captor should be Mr. Severus underneath the balaclava. (And by the way, at first I thought you were talking about a Greek dessert.) I think that would be a much better twist, though it still makes the ending illogical.
I didn't hate the story, though. I was interested. Just disappointed in the ending.
Page 1: If there's one image I never need to see in another film it's somebody waking up, battered and bloody, tied to a chair in an empty room.
Page 2: "You have no idea who I am or what's going to happen to you now..." If he's an important guy, he'd probably figure that his captor WOULD know who he is, I'm thinking...
Page 3: Prisoner is annoying. I wish he'd play it a little bit cool. If I were watching this I'd want him to shut up. It's hard to take "Mister Severus" seriously while I'm thinking of Alan Rickman holding a wand.
Page 5: We've seen all of this. I'm assuming there's something that sets this one apart and I wish we'd get to it faster.
Thoughts:
This is exactly like any scene in an action movie where a minor henchman is tortured for information (one of my personal favourites is the finger-cutting in Man on Fire), except that it's 9 pages long. That's too long for no meat.
The only idea here is the twist ending. We're seen all the rest before in features, with characters that we had much more attachment to since we'd already seen them in the movie. So here's my suggestion --
Captor starts in with the blowtorch right away, Prisoner breaks on page 2, Captor reveals his identity, the rest of the script is Prisoner trying to convince Captor that he shouldn't kill him despite Prisoner having given the info, during which time we find out more details of his relationship with Captor and more details of Prisoner's life.
Because I like the twist. It's a funny idea. Makes Severus a pretty excellently malicious bad guy.
Thanks for the fun read!
P.S. Darren Seeley, right on! Death and the Maiden is da bomb.
I think this is well written but the plot is weak. For me, it reads like manipulation for its own sake. It felt less like the Prisoner "broke" and more like the writer got tired of him.
Yeah I have to agree that the torture methods seemed a bit cliche. And I was expecting to hear the Captor say that he was Mr Severus, so the ending as you have it seemed off to me.
This one didn't really do anything for me, to be honest. I think it was the premise that I had the problem with. The fact that someone would torture someone else half to death, just to test their loyalty didn't make sense at all.
It would have worked a lot better if maybe there was simply just the threat of torture or death. Have the two men verbally and mentally spar with each other. Show the captor getting the upper hand, mentally breaking the prisoner, and when he's retrieved the info he could reveal himself to be Severus before pulling the trigger.
Anyway, congratulations on completing a script & sticking within the guidelines.
Not a bad script by any means. You probably achieved what you were looking to do. A script like this needs to be visceral to engage people in any way, and you're largely successful with this. Cutting of the little finger is pretty standard but you interested me with the mention of the thumb - that sequence would've worked better if you cut out the little finger (so to speak) and focused on why the thumb is the more debilitating digit to lose. I can picture a scene with a maniacal 'captor' listing relatable reasons as to why the hand would become useless.
The whole setup is similar to the one in SWAT where CF is put through a test. As a standalone, you needed a real punch to be packed with your ending and that's where the weakness lies, IMO.