When an unorthodox AFP detective, with a confrontational personality, uncovers an operation of a Mexican drug cartel in Australia. He must now stop a one ton inbound shipment of heroin with the help of an uptight FBI agent after the same gang.

The re-write provides a better motivation for the Mexican and the FBI agent to be in Australia. The hook for me in the concept would be the Mexican hombre hiding out in Australia. That’s different — but not implausible.

How about something like:

An unorthodox AFP detective must collaborate with an abrasive FBI agent to catch the notorious head of the most violent Mexican cartel who is hiding out in Australia.

(Maybe use other adjectives to describe them — but, ideally, only 1 adjective per character.)

>>> In my mind it was a small leap from one drug.

Except it isn’t. The Mexican cartels might traffic in cocaine to Australia [although I suspect the Colombian’s might do it directly themselves] because cocaine is grown in South America. So it’s a ‘local’ product. But your logline says heroin which is not ‘local’; the Mexicans have to import it from the Middle East like everyone else. And the shorter-cheaper-faster-less hazardous route to traffic heroin to Australia is via Southeast Asia.

>>> the DEA deals with drugs in the US not outside.

Ditto with the FBI. US law enforcement agencies do collaborate with other countries in terms of exchanging information, but the job of US law enforcement agencies is to worry about trafficing into the US – not into Australia.

On the other hand, if your FBI guy is a rogue agent, if he has gone off the reservation for some personal reason, a personal vendetta, if he his acting outside the bounds of his authorized jurisdiction — okay. But then, that makes him a more interesting character than the Australian home boy.

Quibbling aside, a logline should boil down to 30 words or less. The necessary characters to include are the protagonist and the antagonist. Who the protagonist gets as an ally may be central to the story, but it is a not usually a necessary detail in a logline

A necessary detail in a logline is the antagonist. Which is missing here. The logline identifies a “drug gang”, an antagonist group — but not an antagonist individual, the mastermind, the leader who serves as the “face” of the gang for the purposes of the audience.

The premise strains credibility. For example, the American counterpart wouldn’t be an FBI agent but rather a DEA agent. Also, heroin trafficing into Australia is more likely to be handled and controlled by Vietnamese, Middle Eastern, Tamil or Chinese nationals — not Mexicans.

And the Americans have more than enough work on their hands trying to interdict drug smuggling by the Mexican cartels on their own border. What are the stakes, why would they be concerned about and meddle in drug trafficing in another country, in another hemisphere over 7,000 miles away?