An undercover officer with a cocaine addiction infiltrates a gang of drug runners, and a blood bath ensues when a heist goes wrong and a rival cartel hunts them down for revenge.
95EricPenpusher
An undercover officer with a cocaine addiction infiltrates a gang of drug runners, and a blood bath ensues when a heist goes wrong and a rival cartel hunts them down for revenge.
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The most obvious problem with this is that it isn’t unique. There are so many cop shows and undercover cops. This logline makes it seem like just a regular day in an undercop’s career.
What is the cop’s goal? What makes this case special enough that it deserves to be written? What causes this cop to take this case? You start with the MC, and then it’s almost like the story shifts to another perspective. The MC should drive the plot, should have a goal. What is the inciting incident that starts this story?
Agree with Dkpough1. ?There doesn’t seem to be anything unique, new about the concept that differentiates it from all other cop/crime genre films. ?And the cop is givens no particular objective goal.
Well, he wants to survive, obviously. Isn’t that an objective goal? ?But trying to stay alive is not what got him involved in gang — it’s the unforeseen consequence. ?(Staying alive is the ultimate stakes.)
A further issue with the logline is that it sets up the undercover cop as the active character only to surrender the agency — the active role — to the rival cartel. ? The other gang seizes control of the story as they hunt down the other gang, including the undercover cop.
The logline should be framed such that the protagonist is in the driver’s seat of the story from the inciting incident to the final FADE OUT.
So, what becomes the actively pursued objective goal of the undercover cop when the rival gang counterattacks? ?What must he do?
Don’t wish to attack my fellow reviewers. But there is nothing unique, it’s all in the execution. Lion King and Hamlet are the same story.
Taking part in a drug hiest that turns into a massacre a drug addicted undercover cop is being hunted by the cartel out to get revenge.
It does cover the inciting incident but not his goals or how the story unfolds. Which is the execution.
I agree that are only so many basic dramatic situations or plot templates. ?George Polti drew up and published a catalogue of 36 dramatic situations in 1924. To which have been added a 2 or 3 more, like the mocumentary.
So the challenge in a ?logline is to indicate a new variation, a unique execution on a familiar plot template. ? Which I don’t see in this logline.
(Hamlet and the Lion King ?although they converge on a similar plot template [#4 on Polti’s list, Vengeance taken upon kindred for kindred] radically diverge in terms of characters, setting, complications, dilemmas and outcome.)
Perhaps for realistic stories such as this, but even then, I disagree. There is/will be a character in someone’s mind that is unlike any other, there is some plot twist that has never been seen before. That’s not even including all of the fantasy/sci-fi worlds that have yet to be.
Given how many cops show/films there have been, it does need to have an extremely familiar(such as NCIS, which could create even?more spin-offs, with each only being slightly different) premise or it just needs something unique. This idea has potential, yes, but based solely on the logline, it has nothing that would drive me to see it, unless perhaps I was just really craving another cop show.