The big project that landed over at Paramount with Timothee Chalamet and James Mangold
Genre: Crime/Heist
Premise: A guy who uses motorcycles to rob banks recruits his brother to join the party.
About: Timothee Chalamet is reteaming with his “Complete Unknown” director, James Mangold, to make this film for Paramount on the heels of its recent sale to Skydance. The short story was written by Jaime Oliveira, who is adapting it into a script. Oliveira has no previous credits. Which is yet another reminder that you can be a nobody writer and land a big project. It appears that this will be a priority for Mangold and Chalamet, which means that Mangold’s Star Wars project has likely gone the way of every other Star Wars project at Lucasfilm – into the Death Star trash compactor.
Writer: Jaime Oliveira
Details: 50 pages
I was told that this movie was the next “Heat.”
I would agree with that but I would add a slight caveat. It’s the Gen Z Heat. It’s soft. It keeps checking in on you. It gives you warm hugs when you’re feeling down.
The reason Heat was so awesome was that it was relentless. It didn’t care about you. It cared only about being the most visceral experience you were going to have that decade.
If Heat wants to fuck you, High Side wants to cuddle with you afterwards
Which I guess is sort of Timothee Chalamet’s brand. This guy isn’t exactly DeNiro. But I was hoping for a whole lot more than I got with High Side.
When ex-bike racer Billy Miller’s father dies, his older brother, Cole, shows up after ten years and says he’s got a new job for him. Billy’s been waiting with baited breath for his brother ever since he left, so he doesn’t put up much resistance.
Cole takes him to his hideout in the middle of Texas, where he introduces him to the crew. There’s the handsome Ricky, the gorgeous but 100% trouble Emily, the mother of the group, Liv, the hacker, Dusty, and the ubiquitous “Chief” characters who’s in all of these movies.
They’re all tough guys and they follow Cole who has created the perfect bank-robbing scheme. Go to a city big enough to have lots of money in its banks, but small enough not to have police helicopters. They don’t need to worry about cop cars because they escape on motorcycles, which no car can catch.
Cole brought Billy in because Billy is the fastest of the fast on a motorcycle. Of course… Billy can’t drive all of the motorcycles at once so I’m not sure why that matters. But anyway.
The group robs a bunch of banks with no problems whatsoever – riveting storytelling when there are no obstacles to your heroes’ objectives. I suppose that maybe the love story between Billy and Emily is supposed to alleviate this. I would most certainly argue that it does not. Eventually, Cole gets word that there’s a fox in the henhouse. One of the group members is an undercover agent. Cole’s response to this – I kid you not – is to do one last job – their biggest yet – in Fresno California, with a haul of 15 million dollars.
This job is the climax of the story and because Cole is the dumbest person in America, he can’t foresee that the entirety of the FBI is going to be waiting for him, seeing as they have a direct line into their plan. This ending is basically the whole reason this movie concept was conceived of – to rip off the famous bank robbery in Heat. Does it succeed? Based on what I’ve told you so far, what do you think?
The greatest heist scene ever, from Michael Mann’s “Heat.”
I don’t even know where to start in explaining how by-the-numbers this was.
It began like literally every movie ever. Dad dies. Brother recruits other brother into crime. Meet the crew. Go do crimes. Hero falls in love with the girl on the team. I was so far ahead of this story that I swear, at one point, I was reading it in Times Square on New Year’s Eve 2026.
It somehow only got more predictable from there. Bring in a parallel FBI agent storyline, which was botched to the nth degree. They introduce this Agent Lennox character like he’s going to infiltrate the motorcycle robbers, only to have him do NOTHING. It turns out his only purpose was to show up at the last second and tell Cole that ANOTHER FBI AGENT had infiltrated his gang.
This then becomes a mystery in the story. Who is the mole?
Which creates an unfixable story situation. Because when you’re saying there’s a mole in the operation, you have to ask as the writer, which character would create the biggest problem as the mole? (Spoilers) Of course, that would be Emily. Because Billy has fallen for her. So, her being the mole creates the most conflict within the group. But that’s also the most obvious person! So we all know it’s Emily immediately. This leaves the writer to either go with the obvious choice or go with a choice that doesn’t matter.
Everything about this story was more vanilla my dance moves.
Here’s a snippet from the story that encapsulates my reading experience.
“One more job,” Cole said. “Then we ride off into the sunset.”
Nobody cheered. Just nods and silence.
Where is the LIFE???????
This is supposedly the biggest moment in the script so far. The response? “Nobody cheered. Just nods and silence.”
That’s how I felt when I read this. A lot of silence. A lot of lifelessness.
Does this story have hope as a movie?
I suppose that if they make some truly memorable motorcycle getaway set pieces, at least the movie will give audiences something to talk about. That’s something that’s hard to measure in a script. The way the motorcycle scenes were described here were vanilla, like everything else in the story. But James Mangold might come in and have some ideas to improve them.
And then you have the final bank heist scene, which is striving to be the Heat bank heist. I don’t know why directors, or writers, do this to themselves. Well, I do. Like I always say, we’re all here to rewrite or remake our favorite movies. And so I’m sure James Mangold is thinking, “I get to do my Heat bank shootout!” But it’s never going to be as good, James! It just won’t be. Even if you do the best job you can possibly do. You can’t beat the scenes and the movies that are in the pantheon. It is IM-POSS-IBLE.
So why not, instead, create your own great scene? Something nobody has done yet? Be a trendsetter, not a trend-follower.
For this script to have any hope, it needs a massive rewrite from someone who understands clichéd and obvious choices.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is an absolutely terrible way to introduce a character: “Then came Emily. She moved quiet, calm. Wore her gear like it was part of her. Her eyes—dark, unreadable—found mine without blinking.” What in the world have we learned about this character from this intro? NOTH-THING!!! Nothing. That’s the only criteria that matters when introducing characters is – DOES THE DESCRIPTION TELL US WHO THEY ARE? This description does not and therefore it is a failure.
What I learned 2: You’re probably wondering, after this scathing review, “Well then why did Timothee Chalamet sign onto it?” Simple. Motorcycles. Seriously! That’s it. He gets to ride motorcycles and the director promised him that he’ll get to be in his own Heat bank shootout scene. It also helps when you have 4 months to pitch someone an idea (as Mangold did on the set of Complete Unknown).
