A talented con-man goes to duplicitous extremes to cover up his murder of a millionaire playboy he was tasked with convincing to return home.

I think this is a challenging?film plot to logline.? I see a number of issues to unpack and explore.

First of all, the murder doesn’t occur until 56 minutes into the film.? So in terms of the standard plot paradigm, the murder is not the inciting incident. Rather it’s the MPR? event– the midpoint reversal story beat that pivots the story in a whole new direction.

Technically, the inciting incident is the offer of the rich father to pay Tom’s way to Europe to? persuade his wayward, playboy son,?Dickie to come home.

That is the father’s objective goal, but is it Tom’s?

Well, not exactly. Tom goes to Europe with an ulterior motive. ?His own objective goal is to ingratiate himself with Dickie, to worm his way out of lower class poverty into?upper class luxury and ease.

This raises the dramatic question:? Will Tom succeed in ingratiating himself to Dickie ?

Tom’s mission become more complicated when he becomes sexually attracted to Dickie.

By the midpoint, the answer to both original dramatic questions is:? “No”.? After all attempts to ingratiate himself to Dickie fail and Dickie spurns his homoerotic advances, Tom murders him at sea off the coast of San Remo.

The murder is not? only the MPR, it is also the inciting incident for the 2nd half of the film.? After killing Dickie, Tom not only covers up his crime, he conspires to assume his identity and the luxurious lifestyle that accrues to that name.

This raises a new dramatic question:? Will Tom successfully pass himself off as the man he has killed?

Now then.

The standard rule is that a logline is about an inciting incident that causes an action that raises a dramatic question by the end of Act 1.? Should a logline for this story be an exception to this guiding rule, and if so, on what grounds?? Is it ever “street legal” to include in a logline a inciting event that occurs so deep into a film?

IMHO, it is.? Why?? Because? in my rule book, the most important element in a logline is the story hook.? ?It’s the first question I ask myself when I read a logline:? what is the story hook?? What makes this story different from similar stories of the same genre?? What’s the element that will immediately hook and hold the attention of a movie viewer, as well as hook and hold the attention of a movie maker — of? anyone in the industry who reads the script?

And it seems to me the story hook in this story is the dramatic question raised by the murder at the MPR , the midpoint reversal.? Not the dramatic question raised in Act 1.? (I was rather bored with the film up to the MPR.? ?And then it got interesting, really interesting.)

BTW: the placement of the story hook has its own exception. (Well, in my rule book.)? The standard rule, the most common practice, is for the story hook to be embedded in the 1st Act.? But if the story hook doesn’t occur in the 1st Act, then it should not occur later than the MPR, the midpoint reversal.

End of 2nd Act or 3rd Act? plot pivots, twists and reveals should not be deemed as story hooks for the purpose of a logline or story pitch.? Twists and reveals that occur that late in the story are spoilers.? And spoilers should not be included in a logline.

Anyway, here, is my 1st pass at an alternative logline:

After a poor gay man fails to ingratiate himself to a rich heterosexual playboy, he murders him, covers up his crime and? tries to assume his identity.
(27 words)

My 2.5+ cents worth.