Post by blg on Sept 6, 2009 12:26:33 GMT -5
Gotta say, I didn't like this much. The most striking thing about this script is the dialogue, which is very poor. It is extremely campy and cliched (with lines such as "I thought you were married to your job" and the exchange of "Dick Tracy!" "That's my name. The name of the man who is going to take you down"). The problem is that these lines are written without a shred of irony, and are the sort of things a child might make their action figures say to each other. The script was pretty hard to read thanks to frequent spelling and grammatical errors, as well as a tendency to substitute the correct word in a sentence with one that sounds kind of like it but means something else.
The story itself is alright, but it's very derivative. A great deal of it rips off The Dark Knight shamelessly. Just take a look: The main hero, the police commissioner and the city DA all begin co-operating to bring down the organised crime syndicates in their town. Meanwhile, the main villain approaches his rival crime bosses and suggests they band together to kill the hero who is hindering their business. The DA is lured into a trap, kidnapped and held in a warehouse... You get the idea. The music cues are all lifted straight from the Watchmen soundtrack, and never really fit the scenes they're placed in. The character of The Blank and certain lines of his also bear strong similarities to Rorschach... Things like this suck you out of the experience, and without sounding harsh, it probably wasn't a good idea to borrow so heavily from such high-quality superhero films, as it just makes the flaws of this script more apparent.
I have a strange relationship with Xplay's work. I think he's a good writer and yet, I think most of his films fall short. He's similar to Indy in this respect; both of them have a lot of writing potential, but I feel they squander it, and it's a shame. This is not Xplay's finest hour, but hopefully we can look forward to more focused work from him in the future.
2/5
The story itself is alright, but it's very derivative. A great deal of it rips off The Dark Knight shamelessly. Just take a look: The main hero, the police commissioner and the city DA all begin co-operating to bring down the organised crime syndicates in their town. Meanwhile, the main villain approaches his rival crime bosses and suggests they band together to kill the hero who is hindering their business. The DA is lured into a trap, kidnapped and held in a warehouse... You get the idea. The music cues are all lifted straight from the Watchmen soundtrack, and never really fit the scenes they're placed in. The character of The Blank and certain lines of his also bear strong similarities to Rorschach... Things like this suck you out of the experience, and without sounding harsh, it probably wasn't a good idea to borrow so heavily from such high-quality superhero films, as it just makes the flaws of this script more apparent.
I have a strange relationship with Xplay's work. I think he's a good writer and yet, I think most of his films fall short. He's similar to Indy in this respect; both of them have a lot of writing potential, but I feel they squander it, and it's a shame. This is not Xplay's finest hour, but hopefully we can look forward to more focused work from him in the future.
2/5
