Genre: WW2/Thriller
Logline: In 1942, the sole survivor of an u-boat-destroyed British arctic convoy is paired with a native Inuit hunter on a months-long journey across the frozen wasteland of Northern Greenland. Before reaching civilization, they must survive the unforgiving conditions, an outside threat lurking in the dark — and the fact that one of them is not the person he says he is.
Why You Should Read: It’s World War 2, and you and your partner are on a patrol in one of the coldest, remotest, most desolate parts of the world — months of travel from the nearest outpost, in the deadly cold of a polar night, with only your 13 dogs for company. — To survive on the ice riddled with deadly traps of open-water “leads”, with white-coated terrors stalking just out of the view of your fading headlamp and the constant threat of a submarine Nazi incursion looming behind the icebergs, every “day” of the endless night you put your life in your partner’s hands — and him in yours. You get to know the other man closer than your own brother or a lover. One night, in your tent… he starts speaking German in his sleep.
Writer: Alexander Bashkirov
Details: 112 pages
It’s finally here! Our Character Piece Showdown winner!
Everything about this review is going to be the same except we’re going to be zoomed in on character. That’s the main thing I’m judging this script on.
By the way, if you want to participate in the next showdown, that would be Horror Showdown and entries need to be in by October 15th. So get writing.
I noticed the spirited battle last weekend but despite the tight race, it seemed like everyone had an opinion on Dog Sled Patrol. That’s typically the mark of a strong script. Even if you don’t like it, you have an opinion on it. So what’s my opinion? Read on to find out!
We’re on the northeast coast of Greenland in 1942. There’s just been some sort of attack. A U-Boat has tried to sink a British ship and the coast is littered with dead soldiers from both sides. One of those soldiers (from which side??) – we’ll call him Jack – survived. But he’s in bad shape. He scavenges what he can then walks into the endless snowy darkness that is Greenland.
Jack barely makes it to an outpost where he meets Ib Poulsen, the Eskimonaes Chief of Police and Captain of the Army of Greenland. After Jack explains that he’s American, Poulsen recommends a two month dogsled journey to a port that American ships routinely visit. Poulsen gives Jack a guide, Ernin, who we’re not told much about other than his eyes look “feral.”
Off the two go and immediately run into problems, such as a polar bear that’s tracking them. Then, one night, Ernin hears Jack speak German in his sleep. He isn’t quite sure what to do with this information. The next day they come across a German weather station, which aids the process of helping German U-boats sink ships. Fortuitously, as they’re scoping the station out from afar, an American bomber appears and destroys the station.
Jack and Ernin head into the wreckage and it’s there that Ernin confronts Jack about his lie. Jack confesses that, yes, he is a Nazi but, you see, he’s a good Nazi. He’d been forced onto a U-boat led by the Hitler of U-Boat captains, an evil entity named Richter. Richter had put the Suicide Squad equivalent of a submarine team together and their reign of terror was so horrifying that Jack literally dove into the ocean and swam away. The story has holes but Ernin trusts him. Okay, he says, they’re still a team.
Soon, they come across a SECOND weather station. But this one is way bigger than the first. And to make matters worse, it’s currently being visited by Jack’s old U-boat!!! Yes, Richter and his team are here! They capture Jack and Ernin and Richter uses them to find the eskimo towns that are aiding the Allies and destroy them.
Jack is able to escape but he and Ernin get split up. Knowing that if Richter and his team get away, they’ll keep setting these weather stations up along the Greenland coast turning the ocean into an Allied graveyard. Jack isn’t leaving until he kills every single member of his old crew, including Richter himself!
The big fear a reader has when picking up character-driven material is that they’re going to be bored. If there isn’t a larger plot engine or juicy concept driving the narrative, it increases the chances that the narrative is going to be slow and, potentially, boring.
So as a “character-first” writer, you have to prove early on that you’re different. You have to assure the reader that while they’re not getting John Wick, they’re still going to be entertained. You achieve this using tools that don’t depend on plot and urgency. Mystery. Suspense. Conflict. And, most important of all, interesting characters.
That’s where I think Alexander made his first mistake.
He initially focused on the wrong guy. Jack.
Instead, we should’ve started with Ernin. We should’ve set up his life, his situation, his personality, who he is, what his flaws are. Then this mysterious person, Jack, should’ve showed up out of nowhere, nearly dead. And here’s why it should’ve been done this way. Because 25 pages in, once Ernin suspects that Jack is German, all I could think to myself was, “So what?”
I know NOTHING about Ernin. And he seems to be the only one in danger from Jack being a Nazi. Yeah, sure, I don’t want Jack to kill Ernin. But I certainly haven’t built up any sort of closeness to Ernin, not enough to care if Jack kills him.
Because another problem I had with Jack is that you don’t gain anything by introducing him after the opening crash. In fact, it hurts the story more than helps it. We have a crash with Germans and British and it’s unclear which one Jack is. So, already, we’re 50% considering he’s German.
This ruins the big hook of the script, Jack sleeptalking in German. We’re not surprised by that because we knew there was a 50% chance it was the case. Wouldn’t it have been better if it was a complete shock? That’s what you would’ve had had we met Jack second.
Even if you didn’t want to do it that way, you could’ve focused a lot more in the early scenes on bringing out Ernin’s personality. I felt nothing towards him because he wasn’t interesting at all. In fact, I felt I knew the Eskimo Police Cheif better, the guy who wasn’t even in the movie anymore.
This is a character piece. Why is one of the main characters so invisible? Why doesn’t he have any presence on the page? In the form of personality, dialogue, action, opinion, or unique attributes? In a character piece, the characters have to stand out.
All of this led to me falling asleep on page 35. Now, to provide context to that statement, I didn’t sleep well last night so I was tired. But it’s never good news when someone falls asleep reading your script.
And here’s the crazy thing about that: after that moment, the script gets way better. Everything changes when Jack gives us the backstory on his Suicide Squad U-boat team. Actually, while I was listening to him talk about them, I thought, “Why aren’t THESE characters in the movie??? These characters sound way more interesting!” So I was more than happy when they showed up in the story a few scenes later.
Unfortunately, this is the problem when your scripts starts weak. It’s hard to get the reader back. And while some of me came back, Dog Sled Patrol couldn’t get all of me. I was so bored by those first 30 pages. And then, on top of that, Ernin was an incredibly weak character. He had zero personality.
If I was Alexander, I would approach this like a buddy cop movie. And I don’t mean you should turn Ernin into Jackie Chan. But I do think you could have more fun with him. You give us this descriptor early on: “feral.” I didn’t get any sense of feralness. My only sense was “plain guy, uninteresting, brings nothing to the table.” Honestly, what does Ernin bring to the table? Instead of saying he’s a black sheep, why can’t you SHOW US why he’s a black sheep. Give him a weird sense of humor. Have him do things normal people wouldn’t do. This character was begging for you to give him something to make him stand out but you left him standing out in the cold instead.
Those are the two reasons this just missed [x] worth the read for me. Boring first act and a weak link in the main character pairing. If you can solve those two issues, this script gets a lot better. Cause once Richter enters the scene, the script finds a whole new energy. Good luck!
Script Link: Dog Sled Patrol
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The Richter payoff comes a littttttlllle too soon. You just told us this dramatic 8 page backstory on the guy who you last saw in the middle of the ocean and now, 10 pages later, there he is, in the exact same five mile square radius of Greenland that you’re on! The heavier the payoff, the more distance you want between it and the setup.
