An excerpt from my script review for Triple Frontier which will be available 03/12/19:
3.) Quality of Characters
The one thing this script did well was present the argument of murder on one’s own accord versus murder as a soldier in combat.
Page 21:
REDFLY
I can see you want to fool yourself
here… but there is a world of
difference between this and doing
the things we’ve done while wearing
the flag on our shoulder.
That’s it in a nutshell, and as the boys go through with their plan, it’s interesting to watch as they delve deeper and deeper into darkness.
Redfly especially, since he begins the story morally sound, but as the stakes get higher, and amount of money grows larger, he’s ever more willing to commit atrocities since there’s no way back.
As an almost opposite character arc to that is Pope.
He starts out morally ambiguous, justifying killing a drug lord as a favor to the impoverished locals, with the lucky advantage of 90 million dollars on the side.
Think of two arrows forming an “X” on a typical story arc chart, and that’s what was done here. It worked, especially as one is more and more willing to kill people, and the other begins to have serious reservations.
(They do converge towards the end however.)
The other characters felt interchangeable. Did they work? Sure, but could have been named “Squadmate A/B/C” and got along just as well.
Two issues that bothered me in this section.
First, anytime Pope and Redfly have a disagreement, there’s no real arguing. They just exchange a few lines, reminisce about the past and bingo boingo, are suddenly on the same page.
That’s boring.
Second, and what usually happened in the issue above, it almost always ended with the group smiling or laughing like idiots, which is fine a time or two, but just felt stupid as many times as it occurred.
<Insert video clip of Wyatt Earp from Tombstone saying he doesn’t laugh all day like an idiot.>
(Sorry, I couldn’t find it. I really did try though!)
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