Genre: Spy/Action/Thriller
Premise: Based on a true story, when an American spy in the Middle East is outed by a Washington Post article, he becomes a target of the Iran military.
About: The next project for director Ric Roman Waugh and his good buddy, Gerard Butler. The script is written by former intelligence officer Mitchell LaFortune. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because LaFortune wrote another Middle East script called War Face about a female U.S. Army Special Agent who’s sent to an all-male Afghanistan outpost to investigate accusations of war crimes. Waugh and Butler worked together before on Greenland and Angel Has Fallen.
Writer: Mitchell LaFortune
Details: 111 pages
As we all know, this project stole both Ric Roman Waugh and Gerard Butler away from Kinetic. So I’m not bitter. Like, not bitter at all. I fully support this movie, despite the fact that both of them could’ve spearheaded the greatest semi truck movie ever made, a blue collar John Wick that will go on to become a billion dollar franchise.
For those of you curious, Kinetic is still moving forward. It’s just happening slowly and with a lot of boring developments (legal steps). Once we have some more “announce worthy” announcements, I will let you guys know! Now on to Burn Run!
Burn Run is a complicated story so I’m going to condense and simplify the main plot points for you. Basically, there’s this guy named Tom. Tom is a former soldier who now installs cable internet in Afghanistan. Talk about a dream job. After Tom finishes his latest installation, an old friend, Roman, tells him he needs Tom to go set up an airstrip outside of Herat. Tom doesn’t want to but accepts the job anyway.
Meanwhile, back in the U.S., a Washington Post reporter screws over an intelligence agent she was sleeping with named James, who brought her classified information about how Iran has secretly restarted its nuke program. Except that’s not the story the Post prints. They go with the story that the U.S. has a bunch of spies in the Middle East setting up an internet that will spy on Iran. And guess who they name? Tom.
Iran’s head of government puts out an APB on Tom. Find and kill him at all costs. The closest CIA extraction operative to Tom is his buddy, Roman, but as soon as Roman reaches the airport, he’s captured by the local government. The U.S. calls Tom and gives him the bad news. He’s on his own. His best bet is to get to Kandahar, which is occupied by Britain. If he can get there, they can get him on a plane. Tom joins his translator, Mohammed, and off they go.
Along the way, Iran does everything in their power to capture Tom, sending helicopters, special army units, assassins. When their truck is damaged, Tom and Mohammed will have to continue on foot, forcing them to trust local Afghani tribes. The race to Kandahar gets slower by the hour. Do they have enough to make it? Or was this escape mission doomed from the start?
This is a script you would never ever ever ever ever write as a spec. It will take the average reader three hours to get through. And that’s a conservative estimate. The sheer number of people of different military backgrounds and different country backgrounds and different jobs is staggering and impossible to keep up with unless you’re taking meticulous notes.
The only time you would write a script like this is if a director or producer comes to you with the idea first, and therefore you’re only writing the script for one person (them). Or if you’re someone with a long esteemed career and people will read anything you write. Otherwise, this kind of script dies on the page because the burden of investment required to keep up with the story is insanely high.
Now, here’s the confusing part. I think this script *was* written as a spec. So how does that work? I’m guessing that LaFortune is in the unique position of having been an intelligence officer. His official status combined with a true story probably got this script enough attention to get it sold. But I’m telling you, 99.999999999% of the time you try and write a script this hard to follow, nothing will come of it.
With that said, there are some screenwriting lessons to learn from Burn Run.
One of the early plot threads has a fellow intelligence officer (Roman) coming in to rescue Tom. When that happened, I thought, “Hmm… that’s an interesting choice. If Roman is coming to rescue Tom, then that means Roman is being ACTIVE and Tom PASSIVE.” That’s not how you want to treat your protagonist. Your protagonist should always be the active one in the story.
Therefore, I wasn’t surprised when Roman was detained at the airport and the CIA had to call Tom and tell him he was on his own. In movie terms, “On your own” means ACTIVE, which, again, is how we want our protagonists. We want them moving, making choices, in charge of their own fate.
Now, you could add a secondary active plot into your story as long as your hero is involved in the first active plot. For example, let’s say that Tom is at Location A and he must get to Location B. That gives him an active plotline. Meanwhile, Roman can be in charge of meeting Tom at Location B. Now, you’re cutting between two active plotlines – Roman trying to get to Location B and Tom trying to get to Location B. But, eventually, you want something to happen to Roman so that Tom has the lone active plotline. Or, you can have Roman and Tom connect and become active as a team.
Another screenwriting concept Burn Run offers is DOUBLE URGENCY.
On Monday, we talked about Double Conflict. Today, we’ll talk about double urgency. Urgency is any ticking clock you place on the hero’s objective. That way, they don’t just have to do something. They have to do something in a limited amount of time. Here, we have the basic urgency of Iran’s intelligence trying to find and capture Tom. The fact that they’re closing in puts a ticking clock on Tom’s journey.
But we also learn that Kandahar, which is currently under British control, is being attacked by the Taliban and probably isn’t going to last more than 48 hours. Which means Tom wouldn’t be able to get on a plane and leave Afghanistan. This gives us double urgency – being chased by Iran AND Tom only having 48 hours to get out of the country.
Pro Tip: At the end of your urgency, always have an “OR ELSE.” “Or Else” becomes the stakes for your movie. So, in the case of Burn Run, you’d say, “Tom must get to Kandahar within 48 hours OR ELSE.” Or else the Taliban takes over the city and he can’t get out. Without an “or else,” urgency means nothing.
This is a difficult one to call because there’s some good stuff in here. For example, there’s this whole subplot about James and the Washington Post writer he slept with who ended up outing him to get her story published. She uses his love for her to try and get back into his good graces, in effect to write follow-up stories, and we’re wondering if James is going to realize she’s bad news and ditch her. Or if he’ll fall victim to her deceitful ways once again. It was a solid subplot.
But the script is so jam-packed with characters and exposition, you only occasionally understand what’s going on. I know from experience that if you’re still introducing characters past page 90, your story is too complicated. And Burn Run introduces characters past page 90. The script is right on the line between ‘worth the read’ and ‘wasn’t for me’ but I think I’m going to let my screenwriting philosophy dictate which side it lands on.
KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID.
That’s my philosophy. And Burn Run kept it way too complicated.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a good time to remind writers of the power of COMBINING CHARACTERS. If the reader’s mind is taxed by trying to remember people, it means they’re not enjoying your story. So you should always be looking to simplify things where possible. One of the oldest tricks in the book is to combine characters. If there are two characters who have similar functions in the story, why not combine them? Burn Run could definitely have benefited from this.
