A patriotic soldier is left behind after a failed mission to destroy a stash of explosives in a Middle Eastern village. He befriends a little girl who help him survive and make him see the effects of the war and when his team comes back to wipe out the entire village, he is forced to pick a side.

I like to understand which part of the story a logline reveals. Here, it sounds like “he is forced to pick a side” may only be the end of Act One. Without a proper understanding of what happens when, the reader may be mislead in terms of what type of story it will be. This can be fixed by rewording and cutting.

There’s also a lot of detail about what I believe is the Inciting Incident (the first sentence). Can you trim/cut this?

Ultimately the question is: what makes up the core of this story. It seems that “he befriends a little girl who helps him survive” will take a long time and therefore makes up the second act. Then, at the end of Act Two he “sees the effects of the war”, i.e. he has learned. Then the climax is when he picks the side. If this is the structure, I believe it can be sound. But the survival story in Act Two is still fairly generic. I would rather see a specific problem. Most war movies have a specific goal running through Act Two.

Once it is clear how the story plays out, this logline can be trimmed to one sentence. I’m keen to work on this with you next month! 🙂