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Suspect Zero script review
Within just a few pages of the script, my worst fears were to be realized. This was another movie about a serial killer. Ever since Silence of the Lambs exploded on the national consciousness, serial killer movies have become a significant genre and virtually none of them have approached the brilliance of Lambs. Worse, most of them are mired in cliches and predictable storylines. So to find yet another one in my hands, I found my interest rapidly waning. It took me a couple days to get through the first twenty pages. I was easily distracted from it by just about anything, making progress glacial in pace. I couldn't get through a page without hearing Charlie Kaufman's dissection of serial killer stories from Adaptaion. It was most definitely not helping.
I finally made myself buckle down and finish the damn thing. I took it with me to do laundry. Since my own washer/dryer sits patiently awaiting hookups that aren't coming any time soon due to the difficulty of adding them to my elderly house, I have to head to the laundromat. This ranks high amongst the dullest of my weekly activities, making it the perfect time to get some reading done. Suitably relieved of distractions, I finally made some progress and discovered there is more to the script than it seemed at first glance.
The script is by Zak Penn (X2, PCU) with revisions by Billy Ray (Hart's War). It is dated November 2001 and is listed as the director's shooting draft. Despite that distinction, I suspect it was worked on further before production began as there were a number of months between the listed date and actual filming. Elias Merhige (Shadow of the Vampire) is the director.
The story follows Thomas Mackleway (Aaron Eckhart), an FBI agent fallen from grace and banished to the wilds of Oklahoma. It has something to do with botching procedure on a case that allows a man on the FBI's top ten list to walk free. That was all rather vague and underwritten. The point though is to put a brilliant investigator in the right place to take up the trail of a killer that may or may not be one of the all time heavyweights. The disgrace part also means he has something to atone for and a highly skeptical boss to prove himself to. This character is so much the walking cliche for the genre that I had a lot of trouble taking an interest in him. Furthermore, he works with Fran Kulok (Carrie-Anne Moss), an agent from the main office . She has red herring tattoed on her forehead. I got the feeling that her part had been extensively rewritten a few times, alternating her between hardnosed agent and love interest. The final version of this character is thus aimless and adds more confusion and dead ends to the story than anything else.
The story opens as they investigate the murder of a travelling salesman. The killer leaves behind a mark of a circle with a slash through it. A suspect named O'Ryan (Ben Kingsley) is quickly identified but he remains elusive. They know who he is and where he lived but not what he looks like. The suspect uses that to his advantage, giving him the chance to talk to the FBI directly and share his own theories. Just who O'Ryan really is becomes a point of contention. Further adding to the confusion are a series of missing persons posters, hundreds of them in fact, that are faxed to Mackleway everywhere he goes.
The script works very hard to keep O'Ryan a constant mystery, right up to the end. This is the scripts most effective tactic for generating suspense. Various circumstances make it too hard to be concerned about the killings and the missing persons connection reveals it self too late to add much tension. So we are left with the question "Who is O'Ryan?" to keep us intrigued. We know exacty who Mackleway is, and thus don't care. Fran doesn't seem to have a coherent role to play in all this and thus we ignore her mostly. O'Ryan is the script's ace in the hole and it plays it too maximum benefit. This is a fascinating character who almost makes up for the other cardboard cutouts occupying the screen with him. He seems to start out as a generic killer but then expands and deepens until the reader really isn't sure that they know him at all.
I'm hoping that the script was given one last pass before filming started. It would be a shame to see an interesting character have to wade through some mediocre material. As mentioned earlier, Mackleway is a bore. We've seen this character countless times before and he just seems tiresome. The script refuses to help him out, by throwing two women in his path, one a meaningless sex encounter that seems to wander in out of left field, and the other, agent Kulok, who is just a string of dangling story threads. Mackleway's boss is the traditional older officer who just can't stand a rogue cop in his department. Yawn. Wake me when you have something new. I'd jettison the entire disgraced agent subplot and clarify agent Kulok, possibly by combining her with the other love interest. The killer Mackleway let slip away could be worked in as a current case. Streamlining the story in that or some other way would rid the script of numerous distractions that take us away from the important thing, O'Ryan.
I have hope for this project. Paramount has assembled a quality bunch for the film. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire was a great little film, making me wonder where he's been since then. Ben Kingsley is a terrific chameleon-like actor who should have a grand time with a well written part. Aaron Eckhart and Carrie-Anne Moss aren't given much to work with in this draft but they are solid performers who should make the best of it. Some fine tuning is all that stands between this film and possible greatness.
(Review submitted by John Shea)
Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)
Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org
Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.
