Today’s script just may be the ‘thinking man’s Die Hard.’
Genre: Action
Premise: A naval engineer and her crew find themselves trapped in a deadly game on a shipping vessel in the middle of the Atlantic when they learn a series of car bombs are hidden amongst the thousands of vehicles on board.
About: This was one my favorite concepts from last year’s Black List. Justin Piasecki is an Iowa-born writer. He was a 2016 Nicholl winner with his script, “Death of an Ortolan.” Here’s the logline for that one: “A disgraced White House chef is discovered decades later preparing meals for prisoners on death row, but he risks a chance at redemption when he befriends an inmate whose guilt appears doubtful.”
Writer: Justin Piasecki
Details: 117 pages
This feels like a Jessica Chastain role.
Contained action thrillers.
One of the most valuable genres for the aspiring screenwriter.
It’s a genre that allows writers to show off their action chops, even if they must do so in a clever budget-friendly manner. No fights on top of the Statue of Liberty here.
As this was one of my favorite concepts from the Black List, I was excited to dive in.
Let’s check it out together.
40 year old Jodie Donnelly is a port captain for vehicle cargo ships. She operates on the big boys, the ships with 12 football-sized field-levels of cars lined up bumper to bumper. This is not a job for the feint-hearted, however. It requires an incredible amount of mathematical knowledge, as if the cars aren’t placed in such a way where the distribution of weight is even, the boat will tilt and sink.
In fact, that very thing happened two years ago to a ship Jodie was responsible for. She’s back in the saddle though, port captaining the Norfolk Emperor, which is heading out of Chesapeake Bay this morning.
Upon last minute inspections, she runs into an old co-worker, Felson, a man who was on that boat that went down two years ago. And with it, his son drowned, as he was also a worker on that boat. Before Jodie can say anything, Felson suspiciously hurries off the boat and drives away. That was weird, Jodie thinks.
She finds out *how* weird a few hours later when they’re out to sea. One of the cars on the ship blows up. At first they assume it’s a gas leak. But not long after the explosion, they get a call from the Navy, who just received an e-mail from Felson. After Felson reminds Norfolk of what they did to his son, he explains the situation to them: “By now the crew of the Emperor has discovered the explosive in the car on deck six. There are more hidden amongst the 8355 vehicles on board. If you do nothing, they will blow. If you go looking for them, you will not find them all. In time, the ship will go down.”
This guy just pulled an artificial Titanic on these m*therf**kers. The crew members and company see what’s been laid out before them. They can leave the boat before it sinks or they can stay on the boat in a desperate attempt to locate the rigged cars before they blow. The choice is up to Norfolk. Is your money – in this case 350 million dollars – so precious that you will, once again, let others die to protect it?
Lots of good in this one, guys. To start things off, here’s an early dialogue chunk:
“Okay good morning. We’re going to do the dirty version here and keep this short. We had a reversal of UK itinerary, so we’ll be starting with Glasgow moving back. First on last off. Drivers, Mr. Rooker will have your vehicle assignments. Lashing crews, nothing under a 2000 kilogram break load. You need chains, you need webs, you find the deck captains or you find Mr. Seaver here. Today’s load is… 2087 passenger vehicles, 47 city buses, 49 agricultural combines, 16 light rail subway cars, an electric wind turbine and an installation piece for the Belgium Royal Museum of Art… so check your mirrors. (lowering the binder) Get your rides, scan ‘em in, strap ‘em down. We launch at 18:00.”
You know what that chunk of dialogue tells me? It tells me: I DID MY HOMEWORK. And every time you do your homework and the reader sees it, that reader gains confidence in you. That reader believes the story more. That reader heads deeper into his suspension of disbelief. And this happens so rarely, by the way, that when it does happen in a script, readers immediately know they’re in good hands.
So I knew this was going to be a winner within the first ten pages.
And it continued to prove me right.
One of the reasons these sort of action-thriller “Die Hard” type movies went out of favor for a long time is because the bad guys had such lousy nonsensical motivations that we stopped believing the events in these movies were really happening and simply treated them like they were being written, which is that they were a bunch of nonsense.
So I put a lot of value into bad guy motivations. If a writer has come up with a good motivation for his villain, it usually means he’s put a lot of work into the other parts of his script. Here, we have Felson, who’s mad at his company because, in trying to maximize every single cubic inch of their ships for profit, one of them sunk, killing Felson’s son in the process.
So his motivation for putting these bombs on the ship makes sense. He’s saying that there’s no way they’ll find all the bombs. The ship WILL eventually sink, destroying all its cargo. They have time to get everyone off the ship before that happens, though. So the choice is tied back to his son’s death. Will you learn from your previous mistake and prioritize crew members over profit? Or are you so driven by money that you will, once again, place your employees in harm’s way to secure the bottom line?
That’s actually a very sound and intelligent motivation. And for those of you who think it isn’t, read the next 20 action thriller scripts with me. You’ll see motivations that range from our villain having secret ties to the Yakuza to being the previously unknown twin son of the protagonist.
Another thing I liked about the script was the unique way in which the danger operated. One of the first things the writer sets up is this idea of how these boats can sink. They are dependent on weight distribution. If the cars are packed in the wrong way, it will cause the weight of the boat to shift. And if it shifts too radically, it will sink.
So, when we find ourselves with this problem of cars blowing up, it isn’t like your typical action thriller where the threat to lives is an explosion. The cars in question have been chosen in a specific pattern so that after a certain amount of them blow, the weight will shift and the boat will sink. That’s a situation I’ve never seen before in a script. And if there’s one thing you know that I value, it’s originality. It’s giving the reader things they haven’t seen before. So the more this story unfolded, the cooler it sounded.
The only question I have about this script is, is it too smart for mainstream audiences? You’ve got this really interesting puzzle that needs to be solved. But is the lack of a clear “BIG BOOM KILL PEOPLE” problem going to make people check out? It didn’t make me check out. I was up for the whole ride. I think this script is gnarly. The writer is definitely someone to look out for.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Time Capsule Actor Inception. One of the tricks you can use to put a clear image of your hero and what kind of person they are into your reader’s head is to use an older famous movie star’s name. So, in this case, we’re introduced to “Jodie,” who’s 40 years old. That’s clearly a choice by the writer to make you think of a 40 year old Jodie Foster. If you had a studly 30 year old male main character, you might name him, “Marlon.” A genius disrupter type? Name him, “Orson.” Obviously, this trick has its limitations. I wouldn’t name a 30 year old character, “Denzel,” as it’s too obvious. The trick is picking a name that’s known, but not too distinct.
What I learned 2: Always use analogies when describing complicated things! In order to explain to the reader why ten cars blowing up on a certain level are bad, the writer has Jodie use this analogy: “We lose ten cars on deck five and none on ten then we’re top-heavy, be like standing on a surfboard with a cinderblock on our head.”
