Review: DYING IN THE SAND

Script review for triggerstreet.com

DYING IN THE SAND - by Will Lintell

Dying in the Sand is by no means a terrible screenplay. It reads easily, the story skips along at a good pace, contains some nice imagery and has intriguing characters. However, no one area 'wowed' me, and the story is undermined by contradictions and implausibility. Accordingly I've scored it as average across the board, and below average for story.

There are suggestions I could make to improve the characters, dialogue and structure, but for now I think it’s more important to focus on the concept and story.

The heart of your story, as I’ve understood it, is about a killer’s journey to renounce violence. Ignacio killed Ramon for murdering his sister, but allows Francisco to kill him instead of revenging Precosia’s murder.

It’s implied throughout that because of Ignacio’s status as town hero his death will cause the villagers to turn against Francisco and he’ll be forced to take his business elsewhere, so Ignacio is sacrificing himself for the greater good of the town. But Ignacio has already lost Francisco the good-will of Cubrero, who’d previously threatened Francisco, with taking his business through a different town – so in that sense the job was done, the town was already saved, which makes Ignacio’s sacrifice seem redundant.

Your tale is about the moral ambiguities inherent in being the hero-killer, but in trying to explore the grey area the resulting message is muddled.

I’m going to skim through some of the contradictions and plausibility issues as they come to mind.

Francisco is at the heart of the confusion. He tells Ignacio that the town is vital to the drug trade and as such he cannot lose the support of town’s people. That is why he must hire Ignacio instead of killing him. But when Cubrero comes to town, he immediately threatens to pull out and use a different town, so clearly the town isn’t vital and Francisco could have killed Ignacio from the get-go.

Then there’s The Poet. We learn that Francisco paid The Poet to kill Ignacio. Francisco has already explained why he couldn’t kill Ignacio, and had numerous opportunities to do it himself but hadn’t, so what had changed when he hired The Poet? This doesn’t seem to make sense.

How come Ignacio could kill Castillo, a man he seemed on good speaking terms with, yet was unable to kill The Poet, a stranger he knows to be a murderer? The only explanation seems to be the conversation with Precosia between the missions, yet that ends in him confirming his commitment to saving her, and her forgiving him his sins, so how does that translate into a change of heart? Unless it’s meeting The Poet which changes him, which suggests The Poet has a greater effect on him than her, somewhat undermining the love story.

And why didn’t The Poet kill Ignacio? The only clue we’re given is that ‘people change’, which is extremely unsatisfactory. The Poet’s change in heart happens between accepting the hit, and Ignacio arriving (off screen in other words) so we’re left with no way to understand why this has happened, and the revelation that The Poet was hired to kill Ignacio fails as a twist and undermines what’s happened before.

If Francisco knew that The Poet was his hired gun, why didn’t he shoot him when he realized he’d been betrayed at the trade-off where Precosia died?

If The Poet had gone to kill Francisco when he confronts him in the bathroom, why doesn’t he still complete the murder after learning Santiago is out to kill Ignacio? If he’s not there to kill Francisco, why has he gone there at all? Also, in that conversation, Francisco says ‘you know what Santiago is like’, but when has The Poet ever met Santiago, let alone got to know him?

Why is it so easy for Ignacio and The Poet to steal the drugs? If Francisco knows they’re out there somewhere, and the shipment is so important, why are there only two goons there? If Francisco can’t run his operation properly, then instead of being Ignacio’s achievement it becomes Francisco’s failure, undermining Ignacio as the protagonist.

Likewise, why was it so easy for Ignacio to kill Ramos and stay in town in the backstory? If Ramos ran the same operation as the one Francisco takes over he should have had a squad of goons, like Francisco, why did they never come after Ignacio for killing their boss?

We never see Ignacio take a PDA from Castillo when he kills him, so it’s sudden appearance seem like a contrived plot-device to allow Ignacio access to hidden information and contact with Cubrero.

Why does Ignacio contact Cubrero before making the trade for Precosia? Common sense decrees that Cubrero will quickly vent his fury at Francisco, who will in turn pass it on to Precosia. It’s this stupid error that gets her killed; which makes her death totally Ignacio’s fault, and this blatant stupidity further undermines audience support for Ignacio right before the final act!

At the trade-off, Francisco is a good enough marksman to shoot Precosia without even looking, while he cannot hit Ignacio and The Poet at all while they run back to their vehicle.

The big confrontation between Ignacio and Santiago fades out at a crucial moment and is never satisfactorily explained. What exactly happened? We know two shots were fired, one by Santiago which hit The Poet in the leg, one by The Poet which missed Santiago. And then what? How did that result in Santiago being captured? You have a big chase scene which builds up to a confrontation we never see and is never explained. This is very frustrating to the audience!

In the final confrontation, why do Lope and Marcelo get their guns out and then flee from The Poet? More inexplicable behavior in a crucial scene.

There are far too many unexplained actions. If the audience cannot follow a clear chain of cause and effect in the story then it becomes meaningless, just things happening for no discernable reason.

For your next re-write I strongly recommend you concentrate on eliminating plot holes.