The Scriptshadow community demanded a review of this script. So it’s time to give them what they want!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: After stealing a traumatized war-dog from the army, a washed-up veteran battles a relentless posse through an inhospitable mountain range to give her a new life in the wilds.
About: This script won the Grand Prize of the Page Awards! Bjack, the writer, has been a loyal reader and commenter at Scriptshadow forever. He’s had one review before which you can check out here.
Writer: Jack Azadi
Details: 103 pages
I believe this has been submitted to several Scriptshadow showdowns, as well as my contests, but has never been chosen. Why? I’ve been pretty vocal that the concept isn’t my cup of tea.
But hey, one of the coolest things a screenwriter can accomplish is to put a script in front of a doubter and win them over. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it’s sweeter than whipped cream on pumpkin pie.
Heck, it looks like it’s going to happen at the box office soon. I thought the Project Hail Mary book completely imploded when its secret reveal arrived. But after seeing the latest trailer, I’m now thinking it could be great.
I hope Mal is great too.
Let’s find out if it is.
Sergeant Dean Black-Feather was a soldier in Afghanistan. He was part of a K-9 unit with a dog named Mal. When we meet them, he sends Mal into a cave to get info on Taliban soldiers inside. His superior makes an order that puts the dog in danger. The dog gets attacked by the Taliban but survives.
Nine months later, Dean is back in the US, drinking all the time and getting in enough trouble that he occasionally ends up in jail. After he’s out, he gets word that Mal is back in the US and at a nearby base. He’s been having some intense behavioral problems.
When Dean gets there and reconnects with Mal, they give him the bad news. They have to put Mal down cause he bit off a serviceman’s fingers. Dean is not going to let that happen so he sneaks the dog off the base. He’s immediately chased by Lt. Ashley Miles, a reckless soldier who has a lot of pent up anger for not yet getting to see real action. Ashley is given the order to kill the dog on sight.
Ashley visits Sheriff Bill Gatewood to get some intel on Dean. Gatewood decides that he and Deputy Cole are going to join Ashley to corner Dean at his house. The problem is, Dean’s already getting the hell out of here. He takes Mal and heads into the woods. They follow him.
What follows is a cat and mouse game as Dean heads deeper and deeper into the forest, all the way up to the nearby mountains. He and Mal encounter some hunters and Mal viciously attacks them. Then he viciously attacks Dean! That’s when Dean realizes Mal really is sick. But he still picks Mal over these army assholes following him.
And it *is* assholes now, as the army volunteers a freaking attack helicopter to help out. Somehow, Dean and Mal defeat that thing, and head even deeper into the woods. At this point, Ashley realizes that if they don’t catch up and kill Mal soon, the two of them may be gone forever. So Ashley ups her game and prepares for a final showdown with Dean and the dog.
Okay, let’s get into what I liked.
I liked how easy the script was to read. I liked how quickly my eyes moved down the page. Not just that but, even as my eyes raced down the page, I could always retain the information I was reading. That’s a skill. Not every writer who writes in a minimalist style can do that.
I liked the type of dog at the center of the story. I’ve read a lot of dog scripts but not any about a war dog. That immediately makes the story stand out in the K-9 space.
I also liked the clever manner in which Jack explored PTSD. We’ve seen an endless number of movies about returning soldiers with PTSD. And so, at this point, it’s just noise. By shifting that PTSD over to a dog, it gives the disease new life and a fresh way to discuss it.
And finally, I can see this doing REALLY WELL with conservative audiences. If I were Jack, I would do everything in my power to get this in front of Angel Studios. It seems like the kind of thing they would love.
Okay, now… did I personally like this script?
I would probably answer that with a soft “no.” And let me explain why. I was reading through the script and, like I said, it was moving fast. There was always something happening. But something kept nagging me. There was an aspect to the story that wasn’t working and I couldn’t figure out what it was.
Then it hit me.
The concept was shaky.
I don’t care how you spin it. The army sending someone out to kill a dog at all costs just because it was prone to violent outbursts. I mean… I just didn’t believe that. At one point, there are 8 different people trying to kill this dog. Some of them are even trying to kill Dean!
And I’m sitting there thinking, “It’s a dog.” “Why do you care so much??”
It’s not like the dog had a jump drive taped to its collar with the Epstein files on it. So, no matter what happened, I kept going back to that. I mean there’s a Rambo level helicopter attack in this. And I kept thinking, “It’s a dog!” I couldn’t wrap my head around any logical reason why so many resources were being used to take down a dog whose crime was that he gets angry sometimes. Under that logic, the army should be hunting down 1 million dogs across America.
The other big issue was that Jack used a retroactive motivation. And retroactive motivations rarely work. I can think of a few. Shawshank Redemption comes to mind. But, in Mal, we spend the whole movie racing through these mountainous forests and I never knew why!
Already, I’m not buying the army’s motivation. Now you’re adding a main character without a motivation. Where are we going? Why are we going there? We don’t know. Until after the fact. We finally learn that we’ve arrived in reservation land where the army can’t chase the dog anymore.
Retroactive motivation doesn’t mean we all of a sudden feel motivation for the previous 90 minutes. We still participated in that 90 minutes, clueless as to why our hero was going where he was going. And that’s a big deal. Cause it frustrated me when I was reading it. I kept thinking, “Is he just going into the forest for the next 10 years to live with his dog like a hermit?”
By the way, neither of these things made this a bad script. The things about the script that were working helped offset a portion of these problems. But, in the end, the problems were bigger than what worked (in my personal reading experience).
As for the characters, I didn’t feel like I knew Dean well. I knew he loved Mal. I knew he was a drunk. But that’s about it. So he felt thin. Meanwhile, Ashley was way overcooked. It never made sense to me why she was so determined to kill this dog other than that’s what the plot needed.
If I were Jack, I would change Ashley into a man, into someone who was way more physically threatening, and someone who was a full on psychopath. Not in the Hollywood sense. But in the way he feels no emotion whatsoever. He’s REALLY heartless and scary. I can tell you for certain that I would’ve been a lot more into this script with him as a villain. Ashley felt like a gnat on coke. She was going to eventually find you. But you could handle her with a fly-swatter.
Finally, the ending. The ending is sad. And if I’m going to invest 90 minutes into this, I don’t want to be sad if I don’t have to be. Dean and Mal need to end up together or this movie doesn’t work. Period end of story.
Despite this critique, I can totally see why this did well in the contest. The writing is of a higher quality than 95% of contest entries out there. And I’m guessing that the PTSD commentary through the dog is what put it over the top. It gave it that extra pop that likely inspired the judges to anoint it over the others.
So I congratulate Jack. Regardless of my meanie analysis, I’m happy that he’s getting attention for Mal and hope he continues to do so. :)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Definitely avoid retroactive motivation if possible. The whole point of motivation is to tell the audience why what we’re doing is so important. If you don’t tell them that, they’re always a little confused about why things are happening.
What I learned 2: If I don’t fear the bad guy, I don’t feel a whole lot of tension during the story. And I never feared Ashley for a second. That’s why I think she should be changed into someone a lot more formidable.
