The Chase by Sergio Leone - Black Light, Mascot, Ice Cream Parlour - Short, Action/Adventure

Because there’s less chance of
them hitting your real head if
they’re aiming for a giant rabbit
one.

Hmm, okay, it's funny and I get it but I think that needs to be rephrased. He's actually a bigger and easier target with the rabbit's head on, but yep probably less lethal with the insulation.
And this guy wants him dead, right? Ah, but not this way. He wants to do it.

Your FADE IN needs Capping and you're missing Slugs for the town and the Ice-cream parlour - was slightly flummoxed when he took a hunting knife from the wall cause I thought we were still in the car. Hey, I get it - page count, you may have run out so you condensed everything. Lots of extraneous knives in this, which probably would be edited out in another draft.

The bad guy was definitely there, and the bad guy won. The mascot (great job with the rabbit outfit) made for a very amusing film visual.

The Black Light? Hate to say it but it's not the same as luminol. It does show up a certain other bodily fluid I'm told.
Was he using it to make sure he cleaned up the crime scene?

It was slightly confusing trying to work out who was who during the chase but it was a fun and fast ride.
The rabbit suit really made this.

I'm not a fan of using generic terms like Driver, Passenger etc, they seem important to that part of the story so I'd name them.

A guy in a bunny suit... hmmm, feels familiar!

So, there's definitely action and adventure in the chase sequence, there's definitely a Mascot (and I liked how it was setup)... but the blacklight and ice cream parlour, well okay just this once.

There's a cartoony feel to this and clear comedic aspirations but as it is I feel it's a little disjointed as it stands, though I do want to know why he pulled out of Colesville - did I miss something?

This is a very good story well told. I like the twist in the middle - great job (don't want to say it in case anyone is reading comments before the script - not to spoil it for them)

If I had to pick on something it would be the line where David talks about the man "dressing as a mascot" every year. That was unnecessarily expositional - you're just explaining the man's attire to us, there's no need for David to say this to a man. So I wish you tie that sentence to a story in the rewrite.
Also the very ending is a bit anticlimatic as the twist happened in the middle.

This was still a very good read and very entertaining too. I enjoyed it.

Enjoyed the writing here - really brought the action to life. Characters, settings, all good and believable. Fast-paced and wrapped it all up within the time-span given. Also, the "hero" truly was the "villain." Good job with this.

I'm not sure what to think of this. The scene changes started off okay between David's car and chase car but then it went to forest road as it jumped back and forth between vehicles. There's an easy fix for that.

Some names for the characters would help too. It's easy to get confused between man, passenger and driver. So did David just kidnap this dude right from the baseball field?

Definitely some action in this one. Another case of the protagonist being a good person driven to villainy.

Reads a bit rushed and awkward in parts but that is understandable given the circumstances and I understood what was going on. Names would certainly have helped.

It seemed weird David saving the man just so he could kill him. The bunny suit was funny though.

-Mark

All over the place format wise (Jeff, where are you lol) but it has a real pace to it, as if we are barreling along in the cars too. Some of the dialogue was almost comic but it heightened the breathlessness of it all

The black light is Shoehorn City (the mascot not as bad lol) but who hasn’t done that in this tourney?      I liked the overall story with the tale of revenge. Pretty good this one

Fast paced for sure but I was getting confused because you jumped all over the place without letting us know where we were. That's why slugs are so important. You tell us we're EXT. ROAD yet your showing us what's happening inside cars and we're hearing their dialogue?

I like what you were going for and you definitely showed a thriller vibe (which it felt like to me...more than Action/Adventure). But then ice cream parlour was a nonfactor. It added zero to this story.

As far as the mascot...loved it. But I did have a hard time picturing it because you tell us he's a 60 yr old man...but how do we know that if he's wearing a giant bunny head? Was this bunny an ode to Donnie Darko? Or more like A Christmas Story?Two vewy diffewent wabbits. I just couldn't picture it so a better description would have been good.

Nice effort though. Best of luck.

The bunny suit visual is exactly the kind of thing that these challenges encourage... something that you might not have thought of without being pushed into. And, it was awesome. Nicely done. It made me laugh out loud.

Blacklight... man, what a challenge to have to wedge that bad boy in. And, unfortunately, that's exactly how it felt. Won't dock points, but, it added nothing to the story.

Fun script, though. Thanks for sharing.

Really tough set of criteria here so I will keep that in mind; that said, this did not come together at all for me, unfortunately.

We get three pages of a chase scene. It's really not entertaining to read one. To see one? Absolutely. But I get it, the genre was action / adventure so you had to go for it.

The next two pages are revenge thriller. You totally nailed the hero as villain, but is the investor really a bad guy? He changed his mind and invested in one town over another, I'm not sure that's punishable by death. I get that you amped up the stakes by making David's father kill himself.  But that's a bad business move investing every dime into an ice cream shop (where he was probably leasing the building), and I'm not sure how refurbishments would have made him sell more ice cream.

I guess what I'm saying is that I was rooting for the rabbit.

AJR

FADE IN: isn't in caps and misses the ":"but that's a minor thing. There's what's after that is more alarming.

Quoted Text DAVID, 45, speeds a high powered car expertly along the road. Behind is another high powered car being driven as expertly.

Until we get to the interior of David's car, can we see David while speeding in the dark?
Why not say that there's two cars speeding,one in pursuit? What exactly is a "high powered" car?
That shows me nothing. I'd drop the expertly stuff. Reads awkward and isn't needed.

Very generic names, "Passenger" "Driver" "Man" When the second "Chase car" arrives, the car probably has a driver too. By the way, how do I know the Man is in his 50s? Isn't he wearing a bunny mask?

EXT. FOREST ROAD - CONTINUOUS


I know given the time constraint, things could be written in haste, and in the heat of the moment, one forgets to add small important details like headers or at least a very needed I/E. FIRST CHASE CAR (remember there's now a second) or I/E. DAVID'S CAR . This is important, because you show us activity inside the cars while giving us the above header.

Dialog is mostly f bomb filler. Twolines even repeated twice. It tries my patience.
Bodyguards put the life of the person they attempt to protect in jeopardy. David simply wants to kill the man himself, which makes no sense considering the chase. ("keep your head down!") The man seems not to guess the connection to the bunny mask until he's told about it. It's also unlikely that a bunny mascot head would be protection from gunfire.

Not for me.

This reads more like a thriller to me, but that's only because I expect an adventure to have more twists. With only five pages, this might be the maximum number of good twists anyway, so no points off there

I thought the use of the mascot suit was hilarious. If our protagonist/villain had more story to tell, this opening could set an awesome gritty-but-ridiculous-things-are-going-to-happen vibe. The technical error with the black light has already been pointed out, so no point repeating that. If you really want to keep the black light in a re-write, he can have a message to the guy painted on the wall that only shows up under blacklight.

Overall, a good effort.