The Setup by Daniel Alexander - Short, Action, Thriller, Crime - Two hitmen go to kill a man who betrayed a crime boss.  Only to find out things arent what they seem. 23 pages - doc, format

There were a few descriptions, actions, and some blocking that didn't make sense to me, but I enjoyed this overall.  I think you can work on finding the correct formatting, because you're close to having a good sense for it.  In your colloquialisms, you'd do better to make sure you spelled them the same way throughout.  I'd like character names, but there aren't too many and they don't call eachother by name.  Still, they only serve as a driver and a passenger breifly, so it's probably not the best way to name them.  I get Driver's (BTW, only put it in all CAPS the first time) penchant for toying with his prey, but I didn't care.  I didn't like him or who he was after.  Angela left me cold.  It just seemed too little too late and not so much WTF as WGAF.  I don't know what to do about that without adding a bunch of pages.  Lastly, please don't tell the camera what to do.  Explain what we see and we'll get the point.  Other than that, it's the kind of thing that would be fun to shoot over a weekend.

Hey Daniel,

This was all right, I think.  I know you didn't name the characters, but all I could picture throughout the whole script was Vincent and Jules, the hitmen from Pulp Fiction.  A lot of this was very Pulp Fictiony, and not just with the swearing.  And, in fact, I recognized a few lines of dialogue from a couple different movies.  ('...and escpecially forget what you know about you and me' is from somewhere, but I just can't place it right now.  'Fight Club', maybe?)

Another problem that I noticed a few times is you get repetitive in some spots.  For instance, in one action block, you state 'Passenger looks over at him with a 'who the fuck are you talking to' look'.  Then, his dialogue is 'Who the fuck are you talking to?'  There's no need for the action block.  Just have him say it.  Another example is later on, you state in an action block 'the Driver wonders what is going on'.  Then the driver asks 'What's going on?'  Just skip the action block since he asks it anyway.  Plus, not to mention, the audience can't tell what he's wondering anyway.  It's up to you to show them with pictures what he's thinking, not tell it in a screenplay the audience probably won't ever read anyway.

I know it sounds like I'm probably picking on you or being hard, but I really did like this story and think you could work on it to make it a lot better.

My favorite line was when the passenger said 'I'm trying to look professional', and the driver replied 'You don't look professional.  You look sweaty.'  That actually made me laugh outloud.  (Hopefully, that's not taken from another movie.  It does sound a little bit familiar.)

All in all, I was interested, but I might be a little biased because crime movies are one of my favorite genres.  I think there is still some work that needs done on the formatting and story, though.

- Mark