The Damage by Matthew Post - Drama, Thriller, Action - After an assassin saves a boy from certain death, & takes him under his wing, he learns that that may not have been the wisest thing to do. 113 pages - pdf, format 8)

Hi, Matt.

I'll pick up on a few things I noticed right away.

'The film starts' - You don't need to tell us this. You used a FADE IN: so that's kinda telling us the film has started.

'large mountain looking area' - If it looks like a large mountain area, chances are, it is. Maybe 'large mountain range' would be a better choice of words.

Just tell us the child's name is Miles the first time you mention it. That's how I'd do it anyway.

Avoid the use of 'we'. I know some professionals use it, but still. If your describing it, we're gonna see it.

I'd probably avoid talking about the soundtrack. OSTs are usually the director's choice so unless you're the director, I'd recommend removing that.

There's a paragraph there with 7 lines. Now, I understand it's an action sequence, so I won't go on about the 4 lines max rule, but you should always break it up according to shots. For example, the Semi halting is one shot, so it should be on one line. However, the men emerging from the trailer is a different shot, so it should be on another line. Hopefully that makes sense.

All I got for now. Hope it helped.

Lee  

Thank you, it does help!

The first line of action is enough to provoke a producer to toss this away, which is a shame because the actual story is a good one. I was enthralled, but only after I had to put a LOT of effort to trudge through all the bad writing.

"The film starts," is akin to me writing "my opinion starts" at the beginning of this post, or if someone reminded me not to leave the house without putting shoes on. Best not to waste time saying something that's obvious. Take away all references to "we", editing effects and camera angles. This is a director's job, not a writers. Write what the director is going to film, not how he films it. Change all past tense verbs to future tense.

The constant use of montages and voice overs became extremely redundant. The only important one, to me, was Miles training session at the beginning. A montage's effectiveness is to convey a meaning or point that relates to an event that happened over a time, of which, would take too much film space to convey otherwise. Four or five montages in one film is overkill, so is thirty (estimating) different voice overs.

Try to take more time and care into fleshing out the details of a scene. I was a touch confused and disoriented in the beginning, trying to figure out that the gunshots at the cabin didn't come from Mathis.  The middle is bogged down by the fact that you give major names to way too many characters. It's a little unnecessary and makes the plot seem a lot more convoluted than it really is.  

I enjoyed the characters and dialogue, and I very much enjoyed the overall story. I was dissapointed when Boss died cause I thought he was a rather enjoyable character (not a likable one, but enjoyable), but it was appropriate for the plot progression I suppose. Hirer was a strange name for his replacement that might be a bit of a tough read for an actor, and just sounds awkward in general. Maybe, the Employer might have been a better name to get the point of his character across.

Now my gripes with the story are seldom but major. I didn't like the ending/climax. As far as I can remember Lyle doesn't have so much as a line of dialogue (could be wrong on that), so there's no build up to the fact he's the sole contributor to ending the climax with Hirer, who's less the true antagonist of the story than Miles. He just pulls a disgruntled employee cliche out of his behind and arbitrarily ends things in an anti climactic way. I would have preferred to see Miles and Mathis actually have a fist fight. I was expecting the finale to be between them. It seemed, before the Lyle crap, that Hirer was just a plot catalyst to get this climax going.        

Now there's nothing wrong with a little bit of contrivance in an action story especially if it's used to get the plot going, but there's a line careful not to cross. There are two strange things in the begging: Mathis's missions just so happens to cross lines with that of another hired gun organization and Mathis and his friends put effort and time into training a kid for three years and THAN have double thoughts about it. Seems the only qualm Mathis has in the beginning is that he's a boy, not there's some hidden potential for danger in him.

Also, later on there's a line of dialogue, something along the lines of "I haven't talked to you in 13 years." This is an inconsistency, as it refers to Miles being 15, but there's a flashback of him talking to Mathis when he was 18. (disregard this part if I got things mixed up. Sometimes that happens).  

Other than that, this was overall a very enjoyable read. But that's only because I had to take a lot of effort and time to dig through the crap and find the good in this script. Polish this up, because most producers sure as heck won't.  

Good luck to you in the future....:)

Thank you for reading! Seriously, I really appreciate the feedback. Notes have been taken!