Unlawful Duties by Bette Davis - Short, Thriller - Two dirty cops investigate a Hobo in an alley at what cost?

Prompt: It's a dead end. What now?  - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Well written. Kept me hooked until the end.

The reveal is shocking but a little underdeveloped. I understand the page limit. I am sure this can be turned into a brilliant short with a little additional information.

Good job.

Some descriptions could be more efficient. An example:
This

Quoted Text The alley is illuminated by a dimly lit streetlight which flickers on and off.

Crisper as:

Quoted Text The alley is illuminated by a dim, flickering streetlight.

And this:

Quoted Text HEADLIGHTS appear they shine directly on the Hobo.

Approaching HEADLIGHTS shine directly on the Hobo.

Really something you can look at throughout.

You also have a lot of long sentences that should be broken up into smaller complete sentences.

The dialogue was just okay for me.  Typical cop stuff

I liked the distraction of the card game.

Didn't see it coming, so good work there. Seems to have been written in haste as there are a lot of missing commas. A LOT of them.

Dialogue was decent enough but it lacked realism for me. It just didn't sound natural. Having both cops shoot the hobo in the end was a bit much but I think I see where you were coming from.

Good job, writer.

I like the concept of this one, but was distracted by the abnormal amount of grammatical and punctual errors throughout the script. I always think of those types of flub-ups as speed bumps; they're gonna happen, obviously, but when they repeatedly occur (particularly in a few short pages), they completely distract from the story at hand. That's what happened here.

As a side, I'd also drop "officer" when Beyer and Horton are speaking. I felt like it added a little extra clutter to the page. We know they're both officers, so I think they're names are sufficient enough.

The story itself I did like. In such a short amount of time you managed to make these cops come off like pricks, then give us a complete 180 where there's justification for what they were doing. Kudos on that.

The big issue here was really just the grammatical issues. Clean those up and you have something nice on your hands.

Greg

This was great. I'm a sucker for corrupt cop stories, and this did not disappoint. The dialog in this was "killer" as well.

This needs a lot of tidying up, which I'm gonna assume is down to the constraints of the challenge.

Thought it started well and there's some good back and forth, though they are really talking to the Hobo rather than each other.

Didn't think the end really fit what had gone before though... might work if it was had less humour and more darkness.

Lots of errors in this but it didn't stop me from reading it. I liked the dialogue between the cops. It felt real and sinister as they toyed with the hobo. And if that hobo really did kill that girl I wouldn't even call them that dirty.

Still, I was left almost thinking they got the wrong man based on the mannerisms of the Hobo. Like he just found her dead body and took some of her things for himself.

If you rewrite this, and I think you should, I would give the hobo more lines and draw into his character more. You could definitely play this scene out for another page and give it more impact.

Good work.

James

Met the requirements nicely.

Kept me gripped until the end and then it all went a bit haywire when they introduced the dead girl element which seemed to come out of no-where. Instead of a shocking twist, it detracted from the story.

Easily fixed with another draft and an excellent start. I do recommend working on this more outside the OWC.

-Mark

Thoroughly engrossing... But I want Hobo to be innocent! Someone else needs to be in the mix, some twist or have one of Hobo's lines be that he didn't do it, or he at least shakes his head, no.The underwear falling from his pocket was ick.

You followed the parameters and the story suited minimal dialogue from Hobo.
I think you were in a rush with this one but I'm glad you got it over the line.

Dialogue was a perfect fit for the characters.

Good script. Horton and Beyer exemplify people who have power, but not the moral fortitude to use it wisely. In their case, the law sometimes gets enforced, but not always in a lawful manner. The bad cop/worse cop routine was well executed, but those knife wounds in the Hobo’s hands are going to be hard to explain…

Limited to the parameters I guess which is why you killed the Hobo off although I personally think you should have found another angle.

The 2 dirty cops play out the dialogue nicely without overdoing it.
The ending was a little extreme and a little rushed it seems.

Good job on entering

Logline is very poorly written, which is not a good start.

1st Slug is dreadful, and I have this hunch the script will be riddled with errors - let's see...

Sentence structure is terrible.  Almost like you have no clue how to write grammatically correct sentences.

Comma use is also terrible.

Sorry, the writing is way too bad for me to get through this.  Dialogue is far from good, and I'm confused as to the 3 characters - wasn't it supposed to be 2 only?

You need to learn how to write.  It's not that difficult.  Now way you can be taken seriously with this amount of mistakes.

Jeff, two characters, but there can be a third character or third variable.

The Third Variable may be in the form of a time element, audio element, object, animal, impediment, etc.

NB: If you choose a third character as your Third Variable this character will be allowed to speak only three lines of dialogue.

https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-0920/m-1599881150/s-0/

Quoted from LC Jeff, two characters, but there can be a third character or third variable. The Third Variable may be in the form of a time element, audio element, object, animal, impediment, etc. NB: If you choose a third character as your Third Variable this character will be allowed to speak only three lines of dialogue. https://www.simplyscripts.net/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b-0920/m-1599881150/s-0/

Gotcha.  Thanks.  I guess I thought that if there was a 3rd character, that character would not be a main character, as used here, but I didn't read the entire script, so who knows, but the Hobo sure seems to be the central element of the story.

Hi,

Nice twist at the end but not quite sure who was supposed to be the traditional bad guy(s) here. Yes, the hobo apparently killed a little girl but then the cops torture and kill him.
Dialogue was ok but only that.
Needs some work and more tidying up but. decent effort.

Well done.

Hard to really root for any of these characters. I think the dialogue between the cops felt pretty natural but the script as a whole could use some work.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one, can't say I loved it.

I understand cops being enraged over what they found but I seriously doubt they'd risk their careers by killing this guy...so that part was way off for me.

This is pretty good though. Getting us to dislike the cops at first but then we see why. But IMO you hurt the switch by having them kill the hobo. Just have them arrest him.  And more clarity on the fact that the girl is there and dead. I had to read that twice.

So yeah...messy but hopefully because you wrote it fast to submit at last minute. This needs some cleaning up but I did like it.

The dialogue was front and center here, which is the point I guess. I didn't care for any of the characters though. The cops are cliché, the hobo becomes slightly more than pathetic when he gets into the three card monte but by then it's clear something isn't going to end well, and then it turns out he actually did it. If he'd gotten the upper hand on the cops, or if he was actually innocent, that would have had a bit of an impact, but this plays out exactly as the cops suspect from the start even if the audience has to catch up.

A few typos and grammatical issues aside, it's fairly well written and the pace is really solid. A decent effort. The Tarantino-style ending is fun but not quite earned.

Hmm -- I really do enjoy a good crime story, makes me all warm and tingly.  Sadly, the fact that you played it safe was a game-ender for me. Some sort of twist would have been nice. I honestly was not that engaged by the conversation between the two officers, which seemed pretty down the middle, and I was twinging on a bit of over-familiarity before you got to "It would be in your best interests to tell us..."  Not sayin' that's a big problem, but the focus of the challenge was "Killer" dialogue.  On the plus side, a nice concept, I was just hoping for more. :( Sorry.

But then I seem to be in the minority here. So good luck with this-A