The Final Target :: SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board

I read this purely based on the logline. The idea of a hitman (lone or otherwise) facing off against a high school teacher made me smile. This has to be funny, right?

SPOILERS

Nope, apparently not. You played this straight, and I really don't think it worked. It's just all so...brainless. Your chemistry teacher, who I suspected to be a bumbling, harmless guy who somehow still managed to outwit this harmless hitman, turned out to essentially just be another action superman who happens to teach chemistry. You could have made him part of any profession, and it wouldn't have made a difference. Which seems to me a missed opportunity, but still.

Your writing is, at best, okay. You could really trim this right down very easily, which would be a good idea since at the moment this is far too long, by just streamlining your descriptions. The first page. for example, is just full of stuff that doesn't need to be there:

- you TELL us the other customers are stragglers late for work, but since you don't SHOW us that in any way you might as well not mention it
- 'David is very professional': again, you're just TELLING us that. Also, and this is the same with Joe, you really don't need to tell us every little detail of what they're wearing. You also spend too much time telling us exactly what he's doing. Here's your first couple of paragraphs after I've stripped them right down:

"The coffee shop is mostly empty, save for a few patrons scattered about. David, 35, sits by himself in the far back. He wears a suit and reads the newspaper, a cigarette in hand."

That's a very quick effort. That could probably be cut down by about half again.
- "It's obvious that David is uncomfortable with the situation he is in": how is it obvious? What is he doing that makes it obvious? Does he shift in his seat, glance at the other customers, stub his cigarette out and clear his throat? Again, show not tell.

And that's just the first page. I'm not going to go through the entire script for you, but it's pretty much the same throughout: you take too long to describe simple things.

The dialogue, particularly early on, was excrutiating. It was either completely on-the-nose (cramming in backstory in a way that is painful to read) or entirely unecessary. The opening exchange about Joe's smoking, for instance, should go. It's just wasting time. The rest of their conversation, however, was far worse. What would possess Joe to talk to his client like that?

I really want to lay into the character of Joe. This guy has to be, without doubt, the WORST hitman ever. The man's an employee, yes? He's being paid to do a job. So why is he lecturing his boss? He's not exactly on moral high ground himself, since he kills people for a living. He's a bad shot, he fails to kill Frank even after putting three bullets in him, and when Frank calls him, Joe's just sitting there, waiting? The man's a hitman, for Christ's sake! A professional! And he's up against a bloody HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER! Just hide behind the door and shoot the man in the back of the head!

And Frank?! What the hell was going on with Frank? I was expecting a sort of 'Jason's-dad-out-of-American-Pie' character, and instead we got Jason Bourne the chemistry teacher? Actually Bourne-meets-Wolverine-meets-Viggo Mortensen's character out of A History of Violence. He was ridiculous, I'm afraid. He's shot twice in the chest at pretty much point blank range, and not only doesn't die from it, he somehow makes his way home and manages to fix the wounds by putting bandages over them (quite happy to leave the bullets in there, I see). He then brings out his hidden shotgun (?!) and goes on a little revenge mission. No chemistry teacher is like this. No HUMAN is like this.

Joe's death was unbelievably lame, too. Stabbed in the stomach with a tree branch? Please. That was, to make a joke out of your title, the final straw.

Okay, I'm done. I think you get the gist. I know my review was harsh, but I'm having a really bad day and your script just made me even more annoyed. I was expecting laughs, and actually in the end I got them, but not for the reasons I was hoping for. Good luck with any future rewrites...but you're pretty much going to have to start from scratch.