kbfilmworks:

What grabs my attention and imagination is not the guy’s coming to grips with the “family stigma” — whatever that means. I have no idea what that means. “Stigma” only confuses and distracts my attention from the main action. And it doesn’t solve what — in my mind — is a fundamental issue with the way you’ve configured your two main characters, the young man and the enforcer.

The MacGuffin (a la Hitchcock) in your story is the money, right? And the main action is the struggle of two men to have it. Where I perceive as a fundamental issue is that while both men want the money, they want it for opposite but UNEQUALLY compelling reasons (to me as a viewer).

My gut sense of your logline so far is that the enforcer seems to have a more compelling motivation to fight for the money than the poor young man. But for the story to work for me, the poor man has to want the money (for whatever reason or purpose) as badly as the enforcer does. The motives, the stakes involved for each character must be EQUAL.

What grabs my attention and imagination is the promise of your premise. That promise is an “obligatory scene”, a “high noon” showdown between the poor man and the enforcer over the MacGuffin, the money. I am expecting a “Thunderdome” scene: 2 men enter; one man leaves. The stakes involved for both are nothing less than life or death — anything less will be a cheat.

[BTW: Have you seen the American movie “Money for Nothing” (1993) starring John Cusack. It’s based upon a real event, a down on his luck, unemployed young man came upon bags of money that fell out of a Federal Reserve money truck — $1.2 million U.S. dollars. He decided to keep the money rather than turn it in, but complications ensued because of his character flaw…]