A Simple Question by Jack Reacher - Short - Having woken up bloodied and taped to a chair, will the PRISONER answer his CAPTORS seemingly simple question? 10 pages - pdf, format

Wow, that was awesome. Very instense. A few spelling errors throughout, but nothing you wouldn't catch in proof-reading. Very good.

No...sorry...but I have to say again that the writing on display here is just so irritating.

The action stacking may work for some but it sure doesn't for me.  You've got an 8 1/2 page script here that probably isn't more than 4 1/2 pages in reality.

It's so repetitive...pound me over the head repetitive.  For lack of a better word, we're looking at torture porn here, only we don't care for either our Protag or our Antag, cause we know nothing about either, and neither is even named.  Not naming either of your characters is a mistake.  Hard to care for someone without a name.  I don't understand why people keep doing this.

Poor punctuation is also a big issue here.  You continually omitted apostrophes at an alarming and shocking rate.

Odd phrasing and incomplete sentences make for an irritating read in my book.  Seems to read like wanna-be hipster cool, but again, for me, it's a big turnoff.

You know, I was thinking it would end with nothing happening, or the "captor" simply killing the "prisoner", so on a positive note, you did bring something to the table, but then again, it's a completely no win situation for our "prisoner"...and that kinda makes the "twist" ending lose it's power and punch.

Congrats on completing an OWC entry.

Effective use of a single location.  Story is nothing new, but I like how you didn't waste time and got right to the nasty.

You constantly used a lower case "mister", which got irritating.  Other spelling errors and grammatical mistakes also served to distract.

SPOILERS

I did like the twist, how it was all a test.  But I think you could have exploited this more effectively.  Like, if the Captor takes off his mask and the Prisoner sees it is Severus, it would have been more effective than the phone call, IMO.  

The torture did get a bit repetitive and I would have liked the prisoner to get even more desperate and willing to bargain.  But overall, not bad.

Congrats on completing the OWC  

The beginning of this one had me thinking Hostle, it was that creepy. Good job.

Half way though I knew the ending though, but I thought it would have been "the guy" he was asking about.

This OWC is an exercise. You've completed it and did a pretty good job. Were there some typos? Well, we all miss some.

Good job,

Cindy

I don't know.  

I thought this was written well enough but I didn't find it believable enough to get absorbed in it.  

I think part of it might be the generic names.  Perhaps if you used actual names I would have felt more attached to the characters as I read.  

But I think the whole premise of extreme torture of a guy to get him to talk and then killing him when he does didn't work for me.  Perhaps it needed more context.

Anyway, aside from that, you did have a couple of typos such as Peer for Pier.  Those can be easily fixed.  

So congrats on getting something fairly good together for the OWC.  It didn't really work all that well for me but I bet you'll get enough people that enjoy it.  
  

Okay read this one.

It reads "fast", and Im told thats a good thing. Its pretty well written IMO.

The story is pretty basic and not bad at all. I could see what was coming pretty early on.

Spoiler alert*


But the captor should have known that the prisoner was going to talk eventually (even if he didnt he would surely have died eventually from the injuries). He could have saved some time and effort just shooting him right off the bat lol.

Good job on getting it done.

I agree with Jeff that this went on way too long.  It was extremely repetitive; I began to wonder if any of the dialog was copied and pasted over.  

I don't understand the cheap theatrics of the captor.  Why the mask?  It wasn't needed.  Referring to it as a balaclava was even more unnecessary.  I had to stop reading to look this word up.  This specific mask was not necessary (even if a mask was).  Don't over-describe things like this; too much detail is irritating.

You should always name your characters.  The readers feel little more attached to the characters when they have actual names, even if they're just something simple like John and Mike.



SPOILER SPACE

Eight and a half pages of torture, all for a test?  Didn't like this at all.  It was silly.  Sorry.

END SPOILER



Phil

The issue here is that by the time we get any new information we're already several pages in and up until that point the story is mostly built on torture and one guy refusing to say something.  Not a whole hell of a lot happens up until the Prisoner decides to finally talk.  At that point I did like the twist, but at the same time what's its purpose?  The prisoner died anyway.  It didn't have the biggest payoff, but I thought it was okay for what it was.

Another thing is that while the captor is slicing off fingers and putting a blow torch to his feet, the prisoner says "He'll kill me."  Again, he says this while the captor has a blow torch to his feet and has already sliced off a couple fingers.  And has a gun.  I know you're trying to create a bigger quandary for this guy but saying "he'll kill me" while the captor is slicing and dicing I'm not sure was the best way.

So this was okay.  Not the most original twist but it was still okay.

Nice job for a week.

Greg

Just a thought that came to mind when I read the logline:

The Prisoner, the 1960s TV show, in which an unnamed character (No.6) is mentally tortured by his unnamed captors (represented by No.2) who want to know the answer to a simple question (Why did you resign?).

A SIMPLE QUESTION

The setup was for a tortured man to answer the question of a man’s location.

Setup worked. Criteria met. I liked the way the story started in the middle of things.

THE CAPTOR - Actors don’t like playing character whose features are hidden or obscured. He could either have been a little insane or tried to help the prisoner answer correctly. As he was, I didn’t think he was particularly nasty.

THE PRISONER – Not very smart or sympathetic. He could have tried talking about family, asked questions that would have made us care for him. Instead he yells. And yells.

This was about the torture of a prisoner not the torture of a human being.

BTW, a strange vetting procedure for a criminal to follow. It’s a one time only test.

A prisoner interrogation is a good choice for the parameters of this challenge. The twist at the end could be effective if the rest of the story is developed a little differently.

First problem is that we don't care at all about the prisoner. This needs to be solved. Obviously, if the prisoner is an innocent person we're going to care, but he doesn't have to be. In this case, he's a gangster or a thief, and that can work, but it requires a little more effort. Perhaps if he is really witty, or shows some quality such as courage or loyalty. He does initially hold out and lose a finger as a result, but I don't think this really raises him to a level of hero, as it's really nothing new.

I think the dialogue needs major tweaking. Doing that, you could create a few pages of space, and then maybe introduce another element. Not sure what.

You have something you can work with here. A foundation you can build on.

I'm sorry to say that I felt this was really weak. The whole foundation of this is the fact that the Prisoner is willing to be tortured because he's afraid of being tortured. All I had to do was scroll down and basically feel unaffected.

Sandra

A few thoughts.

# yes there were typos etc but that didn't stop the read for me
# torture scene does seem a good one for this challenge
# the repetitive asking of the fella did give it away to me that this was a test
# however, actually it wasn't that clear at the end who the man on the phone was speaking to - I read it differently
# if you were testing someone and they hadnt spoken after having two fingers cut off, well, call me soft but that would pass for me

Thought.

Maybe he could have given mis leading information at the end which sets up a dispute as to whether he has passed or failed.

Well done for entering.

This script adheres to the OWC rules and has a decent narrative.
The action repetition and stacking detracted from the read.
I felt the tone was protracted, shorten it up. Or...
Bring some sarcasm and banter into the scene. I prefer the latter.
The twist ending was not a surprise, and it wasn’t clear.
Why not save time and have the CAPTOR reveal his identity?
Logically, I didn’t suspend disbelief for the concept.

Regards,
E.D.

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.

Okay. Page 3 and it's confession time. I'm done.

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.

Good luck.


Breanne

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.

- Mark

As I go:

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.