Screenplay Review – Wednesday

Posted on December 18, 2012 | by admin

Today we go racing back to Black List’s past to see if a forgotten screenplay can sneak its way back onto the Hollywood Highway.

Genre: Action/Romance/Drama
Premise: A high-speed chase on the streets of LA told through multiple points of view.
About: Iranian-born Massy Tadjedin penned today’s script, which landed on the 2007 Black List and was picked up by Dreamworks. Massy is a really good writer and has written such scripts as The Jacket and Last Night. Curious to see why this one was forgotten.
Writer: Massy Tadjedin
Details: 126 pages – March 23, 2007 draft

Scriptshadow suggestion: Will Smith for Jay?

I didn’t know what to expect when I picked up “Wednesday.” I knew I liked the writer but that’s all I had to go on. That and the script revolved around a car chase. That’s what interested me most. How do you make a car chase interesting for 120 minutes? And it was quite a departure from Massy’s last script – a slow-moving character piece about the temptations in our everyday relationships. To put it bluntly, the script’s existence didn’t make sense. Which is exactly why I wanted to read it!

And read it I did. To the tune of 45 pages of, “Are you f’ing kidding me? This is what this script’s about? A guy who robs a bank for $800 and the police chase him?” Even within the most lenient of critic’s circles, this seemed like a giant miscalculation. But this is why reading scripts is so fun. Because, sometimes, right when you think you’ve got it all figured out, something happens that changes it up again. Read on to find out more…

“Wednesday” introduces us to a bunch of characters right off the bat going through their morning routines, the most important of whom are Jay and Carrie. Jay looks down and out, a guy who’s at the end of his rope. He’s even got an infection in his right eye that’s bleeding. Never a good thing.

The perky 26 year-old Carrie, on the other hand, has her whole life ahead of her. She’s young and upbeat and happy. She’s got a big meeting today, something we get the feeling is going to change her life.

Oh, her life’s going to be changed all right, but not by that meeting.

Jay, whose disastrous existence we’re getting bits and pieces of along the way, appears to be the victim of a bad divorce. And now his ex-wife’s dating some slimy asshole who he doesn’t trust around his daughter. But there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s gotta suck it up and hope everything turns out all right.

But that doesn’t explain why Jay, all of a sudden, walks into a bank and steals $800. He runs outside, hops in his car, and makes an escape. As he pulls up to a light, Decker, an off-duty cop, spots him and thinks he’s up to something. But there’s only so much he can do as he doesn’t have the authority to follow Jay (for some unstated reason).

Still, he goes after him and Jay’s forced to ditch the car at a gas station where he finds none other than Carrie, innocently pumping gas. He throws her in her car and starts round 2 of this high speed pursuit. Carrie’s freaking out, naturally, and keeps trying to get away, but at a certain point, realizes they’re in this together until the end.

All of this was fine. Not good, not bad. Just fine – one of those scripts you try to tolerate and muscle through. That is until the twist comes. All of sudden, almost midway through the script, we cut to the day before, where we meet all of our characters again, this time, however, before they’ve gotten into this mess. Hmmm, wasn’t expecting that. All of a sudden, Wednesday got interesting.

It’s funny because everything just slooooowed down. We go from 60 to 0 within a few seconds. It’s here where we learn more about why Jay robbed the bank (he’s behind on child support), what Carrie’s big interview is tomorrow (she’s a writer who’s written her first novel) and why Decker’s been suspended.

With this new information, we see tomorrow’s chase through much different eyes. We now have WAY MORE sympathy for what Jay is doing, which throws the third act into another gear. Before we wanted Carrie to escape Jay. Now we want them to be together! But can a carjacker and his kidnapped victim really fall in love during a 12 hour car chase? That’s the question “Wednesday” asks.

Overall, Wednesday was a wild ride (yes, I went there). It’s interesting because I don’t think a movie’s been done about a city car chase yet, where that’s the entire movie. It happens so much out here you’d think they would’ve made a film about it. Maybe they did and it went straight to video, I don’t’ know.

But if someone were to make a movie about it, I think they’d do well by following Massy’s lead. You can’t fill up an entire 120 minutes with a car chase. You just can’t. We’ll get bored. So splitting things up so that we meet the characters before the chase started was a smart move.

It’s also another example of dramatic irony, which was a Scriptshadow Secrets obsession of mine – one of the easiest ways to pull an audience in. Once we jump back in time and are meeting our characters, all we’re thinking about it, “You guys don’t know it, but tomorrow you’re going to be involved in a 5-alarm car chase,” and that pulls us in in a way that introducing the characters’ lives first couldn’t have done. For example, one of the main characters dies in the chase. To see him alive again, not knowing that he’s going to be a goner in 24 hours, is captivating in the strangest way.

There were some problems with Wednesday though, some almost catastrophic. The script starts with a MASS INTRODUCE (this is when you introduce a bunch of characters all at once) and as we all know, if you don’t pull off the mass introduce perfectly, the reader can lose track of the characters quickly. You only get one shot to introduce your characters and if you don’t do it well, we might spend the rest of the script mistaking two key characters for each other, and if that happens, it’s practically impossible to enjoy the script.

Complicating things was the script killer move of giving key characters names that started with the same letter. We have three important characters here (all women) named Cynthia, Camille and Carry. What are the chances we’re going to keep all of these straight? Not good. But even worse when you’re coupling the names with a mass introduce. There are still people in this script who I’m not 100% sure they are who I think they are. And that stemmed from the sloppy opening.

And even with the snazzy twist in the story, it still doesn’t address the issue that for the first 45-50 pages we’re watching a chase happen between characters we don’t know or care about. Remember – it’s NEVER about the chase. It’s never about how creative or cool or unique or grand you can make the chase. It’s about the PEOPLE GETTING CHASED. If we don’t care about them, the chase is worthless – A rule that shined brightly in this script. I didn’t care about the chase for the first half, but cared deeply when we cut back to it in the final act.

What I’m happy about, however, is that Wednesday is different. It’s got something to it that’s a little bit unexpected, which is why it caught peoples’ eye. Never forget that. You always want to approach something slightly differently so your script has a fresh feel to it. Otherwise, your screenplay’s going to experience a head-on collision on the 405.

[ ] Wait for the rewrite
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Beware the “Same Age Phenomenon” in your script. We all tend to write characters that are around our age. Not just for our leads, but for everyone. The real world is peppered with people from every age bracket, so this is not realistic. Outside of Carrie, every damn character here was “in their 40s.” Is there a single person in LA not in their 40s? I think so. Branch out. It’s okay to try other ages.

What I learned 2: With Wednesday, I realized how powerful the “reevaluation device” was when done right. Take us back to the characters before things got out of control and you can completely change/manipulate how we perceive those characters. This basically makes the final act (or whatever follows) a completely different movie. Not every story is going to be designed this way, of course, but it’s definitely an idea to play with if you want to shake your script up. Not everything has to be told in linear fashion.

What I learned 3: Is your script a tweener? - I think I know why this script was forgotten. It’s one of those tweeners. It doesn’t fit easily into any marketable genre. It’s not really an action film. It’s not a “romantic comedy on the run.” It’s not Crash. It’s sort of stuck in that netherworld, somewhere between all those genres. That’s the hard thing with scripts. They have to be different enough to catch people’s attention, but the same enough to justify a 50-70 million dollar marketing campaign.

Posted in Action/Adventure, Drama, Uncategorized, Worth The Read

Poe_Serling

Where’s the symmetry in your life, Carson… this script cried out to be reviewed on
Wednesday. ;-)

Massy Tadjedin = Paul Haggis… reminded me quite a bit of Crash.

carsonreeves1

I thought I was being all reverse-ironic by NOT reviewing it on Wednesday.

Poe_Serling

If that was your goal… congratulations – mission accomplished! ;-)

ThomasBrownen

I’m still suffering from whiplash. Wednesday was Monday but now Tuesday. uhh, whhaaat…?

Poe_Serling

Dare I say it’s a classic case of hit-and-run. :-)

ElliotMaguire

Sounds like ‘The Chase’ with Charlie Sheen but with a bit more going on in the old brain-box. Seems like an interesting take on a car chase, although I’m guessing the pacing was a little uneven.

http://twitter.com/LisaAldin Lisa Aldin

Right. That’s the movie I thought of because it’s a car chase the whole time too.
Poe_Serling

Two great car chase movies and staples of late night TV: Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and The Vanishing Point.
Rob B.

‘The Chase’ popped right into my head while reading the premise of this script.
WrathofChakaKhan

Yeah, the chase was cool. Carson if you haven’t seen it you should check it out. It’s good stuff.
ElliotMaguire

While we’re talking cars, did anybody see ‘Highwaymen’ with Jim Caviesel/Jesus? Caught it late the other night with friends and everybody slammed it, yet I really liked it. Takes balls for a movie to be less than three hours long these days.

And you have all sold me on ‘Vanishing Point’, ashamed to say I still haven’t seen it.

fd

it’s NEVER about the chase. It’s never about how creative or cool or unique or grand you can make the chase.
Then how come Autobahn sold for 2 million and is in production?

carsonreeves1

Good question. I haven’t read it. Maybe we really like the main character?

Did it really sell for 2 million? I coulda swore someone started that as a rumor.

Chy85

Started to read this however my attention slowly started to drain away until around the 30 page mark. This was because of a sense of dread that it would be like this the whole way through. It did pick up when Jay and Carrie met, but I still kept thinking to myself that we should have got there quicker and that there was a lot of unnecessary writing in between.

I also experienced the same problems layed out by Carson (far too many characters introduced at once, all with the similar names and little to no difference between them).

Based off of Carson’s review, I’ll keep going, however at the moment I would think that it might be worth the read based off the twist in the middle, which for today’s audience I would presume is too late to grab anyone’s attention.
jridge32

The first 30 pages annoyed me. Truly. Everything that can be wrong with them seems to be……

“DECKER is a Lieutenant in the LAPD in plain clothes because it’s Wednesday.
Wednesday is Decker’s day off.”

(How do we know it’s Decker’s day off today?)

(Oh, and if you forget he’s an Lt., don’t worry we get a completely unnecessary reminder on page 20)

“Decker turns on his radio. The volume STARTLES him. He SPILLS the hot coffee on his leg just as he pulls up to the intersection. Decker closes his eyes, swallows his anger, then reaches for a napkin.

A WOMAN in the car next to him has seen all this.

DECKER: “Goddamnit!”

(Huh?)

“The way Murray lowered his voice and didn’t make a scene endears him to us.”

(Does it, now..)

Too many effing characters. Perfect example:

“DECKER stands outside a house, waiting for someone to open the door. Finally, KIM ACOCELLA– 40s (the sister of a soon-to-be ex-wife, CYNTHIA)– answers the door.”

“It doesn’t matter that Decker’s not in a police car, or that he has no way of knowing Jay’s just committed a robbery.

Jay knows what Decker is. And Decker knows what Jay is.”

(Really? How so, exactly?)

Jay’s thrown off by the fact that Decker’s in a Jeep though he still suspects an affiliation with the law…

(really, still? this far into the chase?)

With so many different characters, doesn’t it start to seem like you’re paradiing out a laundry list of descriptors? Until everyone kind of starts to seem the same, despite meaning to be kept separate and distinct?

Page 23 —
The combination sends Decker’s Jeep SPINNING enough for us to be certain he’s going to topple over the slope.

But then, with less than some tens of INCHES to go, it doesn’t. For a moment, Decker doesn’t remember Jay. His leg shakes.

(This is not a novel)

Page 24–
Awful dialogue.

Why did Jay rob the Subway? He needs money for (I think) child support, but at what point did he get so damn desperate? Why’s he going THIS far with it? Holding Carrie at gunpoint; stealing her car; holding her hostage. When did this guy become such an arch criminal?

I’m not buying any of this.

“By now, Decker’s evidently reached “Sammy” on his phone.

DECKER
Sammy, it’s Decker. Where are you?”

(Is that sentence really necessary)

Page 30 —
More new characters. I could continue, but why?
JakeBarnes12

“It’s NEVER about the chase. It’s never about how creative or cool or unique or grand you can make the chase. It’s about the PEOPLE GETTING CHASED. If we don’t care about them, the chase is worthless.”

Thanks, Carson, for explaining precisely why the “Total Recall” remake sucks.
TGivens

Well Drive also comes from netherworld. I think all Wednesday needs is a good director like Nicolas Winding Refn.
Ambrose*

It’s time to dust off my rewrite of ‘Grand Theft Auto’.
Ron Howard, are you busy?
gj_d

I think this script is an experimental attempt to tap into the morbid fascination many of us have with watching those live broadcast car chases on the local news. While the dramatic tension of those chases is gripping, because you are watching reality, here, as a dramatic piece the same sort of tension just isn’t there. I can see the writer’s attempt at laying an over-arcing drama over the newsworthy events we watch every day, but I just didn’t think this one took wings.

While we have, seemingly, dozens of characters introduced and woven throughout the story I can’t say I cared about any one of them. This may well be the largest wading pool ever constructed by mankind. I didn’t find the Carrie/Jay relationship either genuine or believable.

But hats off to the writer for creating this elaborate labyrinth of events and characters built around a central event. While it doesn’t lead anywhere, the author should at least get some type of award for sheer audacity and ambition.

As far as originality, Jean-Luc Godard’s WEEKEND (1967) once turned the idyllic French countryside into a black comedy filled with car wrecks, cannibalism, and revolution. On a dramatic level, that one didn’t work that well either. But, then again, that wasn’t Godard’s intent. But at least on a voyeuristic level it had more to offer than this script.

Wasn’t for me.
GraemeMcPhail

I quite liked the writing in this, but there were looooonnnnnggggg periods where I just wasn’t having my attention fully grabbed by it.
garrett_h

“It’s interesting because I don’t think a movie’s been done about a city car chase yet, where that’s the entire movie. It happens so much out here you’d think they would’ve made a film about it. Maybe they did and it went straight to video, I don’t’ know.”

There’s THE CHASE with Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson. I think it was actually in theaters. I don’t tink it did very well. They used to show it around the clock on HBO though.

Citizen M

The chase scenes are really only from page 16 to page 48. Then there’s a long flashback to Tuesday, then an extended quiet ending with no action.

Citizen M

I enjoyed it but around p. 112 I was hoping it would end soon. It is very much in the style of Altman with multiple overlapping story threads and lots of characters. I think these are the most difficult stories to write

They are also the most difficult to read. My notes look like an FBI case wall with names and links between them forming a messy spiderweb. I had to continually check who was who.

This is much more drama than chase movie. Everyone is a little bit flawed, and we see how the flaws all build up into one giant clusterfuck. Jay shouldn’t steal, Carrie should have escaped, Decker should have kept off the case, Murray should have followed regulations, Camille shouldn’t get involved with sleazeballs, Eddie should learn to shut up… it goes on, each little flaw like repeated slaps on a spinning wheel making it go faster.

As to why it’s forgotten. For one thing, it’s too long, but that’s an easy fix. I think the main problem is Carrie. Could you get a name actress to play her? I don’t think so. She doesn’t fit today’s female heroine. She’s not proactive, and allows Jay’s handsomeness to sway her judgement. The Stockholm Syndrome angle I found a little far-fetched. And the ending is too indefinite. Then there’s also the mixture of genres Carson alluded to. If you don’t know what genre it is, how do you market it and to who?

But still, [x] worth the read.

Citizen M

There were so many names I fed them into Wordle to try and make sense of them.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1447159138 Tim Miller

“Wednesday” is the best kind of script that we get here on Scriptshadow: It’s not good, and that’s why you should read it. It’s got problems, but you can learn a lot from it.

Carson’s right that the unique thing about this script is that it’s unconventional. First, it’s unconventional structurally. We get the second act first and the first act second. Almost exactly. The twenty five pages of character and backstory that we need to understand what’s going on take place between page 50 and page 75. Which is interesting, and it might have worked well here, if not for the pace problem. The trouble is, page 1 to page 50 are an adrenaline-fueled powerhouse, and then the whole rest of the script is basically an interior character piece. And I’m just not sure that works. This problem is magnified by the fact that the script is also unconventional in terms of genre; it can’t seem to decide if it wants to be an action movie or a weepy drama. And let’s face it, it can’t be both. It CAN be an action movie with weepy drama moments, or a weepy drama with action movie moments, but it can’t be half one kind of movie and the other half a different kind.

Now, all of that said, it’s not hard to see why this script stood out and landed on the Black List. And that’s because it has great characterization. Jay Fitch is a very well-fleshed character. He’s basically John Rambo. (Like in the REAL John Rambo, from David Morrell’s novel). The troubled down-on-his-luck veteran who runs afoul of the law. That’s a GREAT character, and Tadjedin does an admirable job of making him complex. That’s the thing that’s so often missing from amateur efforts: the FLAWED HERO. We too often get heroes who are all one thing. Jay Fitch works because he’s many things. He’s an ex-Marine, but also a co-worker, a brother, an asshole, an armed robber, and a dad. Tadjedin doesn’t TELL us any of that, he SHOWS us by having Jay DO all kinds of different things, and that is the basis of good storytelling.

It’s also true that there are some pretty annoying errors here. The prose tells us how to feel too often. The biggest action moment strains credulity (news chopper pilots are NOT THAT DUMB). Believe it or not the biggest one for me was that there are THREE references to the “helicopter’s propeller.” Helicopters DO NOT HAVE PROPELLERS. The spinny-things are called ROTORS. And why are the police choppers “Robinson R44 Raven II”s, while all we get for the plane is “plane”? What kind of plane? A Cessna 152 or an Airbus A380? BIG difference. Simple mistakes like that always throw me because they are so easy to fix. If you are uncertain, GTS.

Overall, then, I think this one is definitely worth the read, even if though I doubt you’ll ever see it in your local multiplex. (Also because it’s sort of political about the Iraq War, and I think the time for that kind of movie has passed). Muscle through it, and think about how you feel about the two main characters at the end. It’s complex, and that’s what make it good.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1447159138 Tim Miller

Also, (and off topic) it looks like the Gosling script for tomorrow has gone bye-bye, if somebody has it and want to shoot it to me, I’d be pumped.
tim spokenscience com
SeekingSolace

“Wednesday” has the feel of “Dog Day Afternoon,” and a protagonist I kind of want to root for, but the pieces to this puzzles are too jumbled. It’s partially told out of sequence. We don’t find out why Jay committed the robbery until practically the end of the second act. When the reason is revealed it’s seems highly implausible.

Would anyone really resort to such means to get money to keep his ex-wife from taking their daughter and moving away with her beau. There was never a definite amount negotiated on and the wife passively agreed that if he got some money she’d stay as if to appease him. Then there’s the implausibility that someone could grab $800 from a subway cash register, it’s a popular restaurant, but not that popular. Then for an off duty cop to just know he was looking at a criminal in traffic is absurd….or profiling. Then to reveal that Jay’s not really a criminal he’s a soldier who served in Iraq and was damn near blown to smithereens is equally absurd. The whiny chick sidekick is believable, but ultimately annoying.

The bad portrayal of the Veterans Affairs office is something a lot of soldiers will sadly be able to attest to, as well as the struggle to readjust to society and finding work. But do you really think soldiers or family and friends of soldiers want to see this in yet another film? Really? Like really, really?

There’s a lot of potential with the script and maybe that’s why it has garnered interest, but until the soldier bit is dropped, and the stakes are raised beyond maybe she’ll stay, maybe she’ll go, I’ll have to rate “Wednesday” as [x] wasn’t for me.
Poe_Serling

Loftin’s resume is indeed impressive… I figured it might include a few Burt Reynold’s films.

Back in the day…

An interviewer asked Reynolds about his chances of winning an Oscar someday… His response? He wasn’t confident in winning an Oscar, but he was pretty sure that he would get some kind of award from the AAA autoclub.

Ambrose*

Speaking of Burt and car chases…’The Cannonball Run’.

Poe_Serling

According to Wiki, that picture cost under 20 million and grossed over 200 million…. talke about a nice return on your investment.

donaldson728

Wouldn’t this story have been more effective (and a lot shorter) if we focused more on Jay and Carrie’s world’s only? Instead of spending all this time on people we only meet in passing, or the contrived way they were forced together? I think the writer did a good job of revealing jay and his motivations but we know almost nothing about Carrie except that she’s expecting a big day. I think it would be much more fascinating if we saw these two people’s lives, wildly different, slowly close in on one another and eliminate all of the extra nonsense with the others.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1447159138 Tim Miller

I totally agree with this. There is too little development of Carrie, and probably too much of Decker, who basically disappears after the crash. The movie feels like it wants to be more of a love story than it is.
KMiller1212

I couldn’t agree more. All of the minor characters being loosely related felt like a poorly done chase version of Love Actually. You can’t rely on the coincidence of being all in one world in lieu of characters we care about. For my money, I had already checked out by the time we got to the second act and started learning about what started all of this. And then there wasn’t enough for me to hang my hat back on once we learned that.

Colenicks83

I had a rough time overcoming all the characters in the beginning. It was tough to get attached to any of them and want to keep on going.
http://twitter.com/jaexhkim jae kim

I just couldn’t get into this one. I don’t care how ‘different’ a script feels, it’s just not enough for me to keep reading.
all the characters in the beginning and the seemingly convoluted story did me in.
dkFrizzell

Couldn’t get past the names. In general I have a difficult time keeping names straight, so reading all the similar names jumbled together makes it doubly so.

The writer thought they were being cute, but in the end it just confused and annoyed me.
Poe_Serling

Hey Carson-

Here’s a script that you just might want to add to your ‘Scripts I’m Looking for’
list.

Hellified: A strike force made up of criminals is sent into Hell to prevent the End of
Days.

Original writer: Andy Burg and New Writer: Michael Finch

Sounds like a fun and devilish take on whole The Dirty Dozen-type suicide mission
film.

https://twitter.com/cmulliganauthor Chris Mulligan

I read an early draft of this. It was called Hella-fied. In it, they sent the criminals into Oakland, California to prevent the Hyphy movement. (I’m relying on knowledge of regional slang and musical trends for that joke to land. Is this wise?)

Poe_Serling

The Hyphy movement… I just learned something new. Thanks for the extra brain wrinkle. Those in the know say ‘lots of wrinkles = lots of smarts.’ ;-)

Poe_Serling

Yeah, I’m familiar with Moonrunners… here Jim Mitchum gets behind the wheel in a role that echoes his dad’s star turn in the drive-in favorite Thunder Road.
http://twitter.com/MARKT11 MARK

mike jones was also a writer on THE JACKET; from his rewrites? He cleaned up a lot of others’ messes
edw1225

The script had me interested early on. I’m a sucker for an early mystery and was curious how all of these characters would tie in. The writer did a good job of juggling a lot of characters, with some good hints while bringing back characters that were gone for a while. I was surprised that I could keep track of the characters for most of the script, although Cynthia and Camilla mixed me up at times.

My main problem with the script is I didn’t buy a lot of the decisions. Jay is supposed to be a good guy, then we find out (if I remember correctly) he probably could have borrowed the money he needed from his brother. I also though Carrie and Camilla went about-face and decided to help him way too easily. I’m guessing Stockholm Syndrome requires being a hostage far longer than a few hours to kick in.
Cfrancis1

Okay, Carson, you’ve convinced me to keep reading. I was gonna stop where I left off (page 43) because, to me, this felt like a ton of other car chase movies. Nothing seemed special. I didn’t know or care about the characters. Sloppy action lines. Too many characters. Too many unfilmables. But… I think I’ll trudge forward and try to get through it. Sounds like some interesting things happen later on.

But, man, should I as a reader have to wait for the interesting stuff? Not a good way to start a script.
TheRealMWitty

“Muscle” is the right word indeed to describe the experience of reading
Wednesday. It was at times a chore, but I feel like a stronger script
reader for having finished it — though I can’t quite say I thought it
was bad. I couldn’t quite get past Decker just knowing by instinct that
Jay was up to no good. I needed, something, anything to put me in his
head for that moment; something to make his actions relatable. You can
be clever about it; well, you should be clever about it. Maybe Decker’s
suspicious because the sandwich bag isn’t dripping grease out of the
bottom. I don’t know, but the whole thing just felt so unnecessarily
weighed down by it; at least until the cut to the previous day, anyway.

Also, one pet peeve: News media commenting as if they know they’re in a movie. Comments like “We know it won’t end well.”
ff

If you don’t care about the characters then it’s not worth reading/watching at all.

Why did you give it a worth the read? Characters trump EVERYTHING else the story could possibly be. Period.
Joseph Harding

Ehhh… never found myself rooting for Jay. In the end, he came off as too much of a Mary Sue. He’s a war hero! Who got screwed over by the government! And now he has to rob a Subway to get money to stop his ex-wife from moving in with a skeevy dude! And he takes a hostage, but she ends up falling in love with him! It’s just too much. I see comments about the flawed hero, but the script brushes aside all his flaws. He didn’t accept help from Steven. Steven “wasn’t enough of a brother.” He couldn’t accept his ex-wife getting together with another man. He was right not too, the guy’s a sleazeball. Someone got killed in the car chase he started. But it was Carrie’s idea to drive to the airport and the guy shouldn’t have been in that airspace and the first place and also Decker is a jerk, so there. Even what happened to him in the war isn’t his own fault, it’s Bush’s fault! And Carrie’s! For not caring hard enough!

C’mooooooooooon.
James Inez

Man, I give this one a [xx] worth the read. I thought it excellent. I noticed the mass character introduce, but the writer made each character so distinct, that it was hard for me to mess them up. The 3 C’s were kind of confusing though I have to admit. Especially when I put the script down for a while and got back to it. But the writer was also on top of that, usually reminding us who each one was. It’s almost like he made it confusingless, or nearly impossible to get confused.
I also loved how everything was interconnected. He weaved everything together so well and there never was a dull moment. I mean even the conversations between one of the C’s and the make-up girl was a story in itself. heh. That was pretty good. I really liked the development of the characters and their situations felt real.
I thought it was really good.
Well done.
AS

This was such a sleeper for the first act. I had an extremely hard time sticking with it. Too many characters and nothing new to draw me in. The script definitely picked up steam and had interesting moments in the second and third act. I’m just not sure it was enough. Overall there were just too many times where something seemed to be a little too convenient or the writer took short cuts to connect the dots. I applaud the ambition here but it wasn’t for me. I also thought it was an odd choice to end on the girl character instead of Jay.
J.R. Kinnard

Okay. I really Really REALLY disliked this script. In fact, I was sort of surprised at how angry it made me.

First of all, and I accept this might just be a personal failing, I couldn’t keep all the characters straight. In fact, there were characters I was NEVER able to keep straight. I’m ashamed to say this, but I was actually glad when the one dude died in the helicopter crash so I wouldn’t have to keep track of him anymore. lol

Finishing this was a labor of love. Or at least a labor of dedication. I was ready to quit FOR REAL and then Carrie made her suggestion to go to the airport to avoid surveillance. This was completely illogical and out of the blue, but at least it was a character development, so I soldiered on.

The flashbacks offered some insight into the characters, but none of them had individual voices. They all blended together like white noise. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to care about or why, and it didn’t feel to me like the writer had a clear grip on those things, either. Seriously, if you’re going to give us 6 threads and 12 characters to follow, make something stand out so we can actually follow along. Even if you have to name your characters ‘Dopey’ and ‘Sneezey’!

There is absolutely no subtext in this script. None. I know it’s just a standard actioner, but the dialogue is completely listless. Worse, when it TRIES to say something, it’s totally on-the-nose. It’s as though the writer was so focused on making this a slice-of-life story, that he forgot to do any detailing for the characters.

The transitions between scenes (and threads) is incredibly sloppy. It has no flow whatsoever. We stick with boring threads that seem to be going nowhere (like the angry cop who likes hookers talking to his buddy about something boring), and never return to interesting ones (like the poor mother and daughter who get crushed on the freeway… though they magically re-appear at the end).

Ultimately, I was bored, confused and ultimately frustrated with this script. And it gave me a new respect for Paul Haggis and the work he did on “Crash”.
CKirich

I guess when you’re a writer that sells, you can write just about any way you want.
The rule if you’re going to break rules, make sure you’re consistent applies here. I gave up on keeping track of those things 20 pages in. Some of the talking head scenes could have worked so much better with just cutting out some of dialogue both in number and length. They would have all been trimmed on the set. People just don’t talk like that, and that’s why the drama just didn’t carry through the script, 90 minutes of falling apart is a bit much to carry and try to make it an action flick. That is why it fails, choose one and stay with it.

I liked the script enough to keep going to the end. There’s a good base line story going on with Jay that plays well. Lately I’ve been getting a bit tired of using the suffering soldier crutch, stop using them and get creative. To be honest I have all the respect in the world for our service men and we treat them like shit. In the last 200+ years, millions of our soldiers fought in the most horrible and bloodiest of conditions, coming home and built the greatest nation on earth. When a story starts moving away from a troubled person to pointing fingers at a war, it starts to become political and a beaten horse. (MC ’79) Can’t the guys have inventive problems to pull us in, not just “Oh it’s a war thing”. Bullet fragments, meth lab or car explosions and gang IEDs. Tons of cool and unique problems, mystery events that unfold that let the characters inner demons play out. Then around page 60 I’m thinking of “Crash”. Please don’t try to finish it by interlocking all the characters. There was an attempt made but luckily it fell short.

The action scenes for the most part are nicely written until the airport. That was a mess, propellers on a helicopter? They’re rotors. A helicopter pilot flying into a no fly zone, chasing a stolen car, and is hit by a small plane. All the cops and they lose the car, just seemed like something to be figured out later. That just ended it right there for me. Too many moments are just drawn out and you know they are all going to be cut. This is a good story filled with a ton of over blown and “puppy dog eyed” dialogue, and would love to read the re-write when it’s all chopped out.
shewrites

This was a strange beast, lots to like, as much to dislike and overly ambitious.
The interwoven character stories worked well for me, Jay was very well fleshed out and his motivation and backstory compelling.
On the down side, I agree that the flood of characters in the first pages was a real turn off as were the numerous unfilmables and the writer telling us too often how we should feel or being too obvious on what the reader should notice.
Overall, I still think it was an interesting read.
carsonreeves1

Yeah, doing this in moderation is pretty much standard in today’s screenplays.