Beyond Limits -- a poorly titled Thriller

[joea]

So I just deleted the long paragraph I wrote on the history this script, which lets face it is not really of interest to anyone.

Instead, here goes:

"To protect his family, an honest doctor must go outside the law to nurse a mafioso's son pursued by an assassin back to health."

The current title -- Beyond Limits -- is not one I'm particularly proud of. But I am even less proud of every title that went before it except the one that became the working joke title: An Untitled Work of Genus.

Get it? Genus, instead of Genius. That's right, folks, I took a Dave Eggers title idea, mutilated it and added a biology joke. It takes real talent to do that.

NOTE: I've added a plot summary in a post below.

Thanks for reading, and for your thoughts.

[marc]

Maybe you should write 'heal a mafioso's son' or 'mend...' instead of 'nurse back to health'. That creates in my head the image of a mustached doctor in nurse's outfit...

Also it makes it even shorter (which it is already) and less tangled.

[mscherer]

Joea,

To protect his family, an honest doctor must go outside the law to nurse a mafioso's son pursued by an assassin back to health.

Protagonist: an honest doctor
Antagonist: hired assassin
Situation: go outside the law to heal a Mafioso’s son
Stakes: save the Mafioso’s son’s life; protect family.

Ok, you seem to have all the parts of a successful logline: protagonist; antagonist; situation; stakes. But what I don’t get from the logline: how does this honest doctor go outside the law? Is it just by the fact that he is doctoring a Mafioso’s son (is the kid wanted by the law? If not, the doctor has not broken any laws) or does the doctor do something ‘criminal’ to save the kid’s life?

Also, why is the doctor’s family threatened? That gives you two stakes: protect his family; protect the kid. Now, these goals are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but you need to make it clear who threatens the family: the Mafioso crime boss, or the assassin?

Only throwing this out there as ‘food for thought’.

From what I know of the story this would be my take on a logline:

An honest small town doctor must go outside the law in order to protect the son of a Mafioso crime boss and his own family from a hired assassin.

Keep Writing!

[joea]

Hey guys, thanks for sharing. I probably should have posted a plot summary along with this logline. It probably would have cleared Mike's questions up. Let me try.

The story takes place in the middle of a gang war, and is about the doctor's attempt to cure the mafioso's son, because only then can the son use his influence to protect the doctor's family (the son's father is killed in a raid early on). The gang war aspect makes it impossible to treat the son in a hospital where he would be too open to attack.

The doctor's family go into hiding -- separate from the doctor -- fairly early in the story, and the assassin pursues them both, knowing the doctor will give up the son if he can find the doctor's family.

Much of the story is taken up by the doctor's attempts to get a diagnosis for the mafioso's son and get the medicine needed for a cure. Because he doesn't have access to any advanced medical equipment (he and the son hide out in a primitive medical facility the crime family uses to discreetly treat injuries) he has to go to a hospital and trick them into diagnosing some blood for him (a crime). Then, when the cure requires blood plasma, he steals a blood delivery truck and a uniform and tricks a blood bank into giving him the plasma (another crime, several in fact). Also, when a small time hood figures out where he and the son are, the doctor has to fight him and nearly kills him, though he's stopped by the hood's meek, reluctant partner, who does the job instead.

Then, just when the mafioso's son is cured and restored to power, the assassin tracks down the doctor's family, forcing the doctor to betray his newly cured patient.

The whole thing takes place against the backdrop of the thematic content, which is about the doctor forgiving his own father for similar actions in a crisis that lead to him going to prison and ruining the doctor's early life, and the mafioso's son learning a lesson about responsibility and ethics from the doctor. And of course it all leads to a big showdown in the third act.

Hope that helps, guys.

[marc]

maybe you should mention that in the logline that there is a rift between the doctor and his own father - and that therefore he has vowed, or whatever, to be an honest, law-abiding man.

As for the title - why don't you go into the story and pick a line of dialogue or image in the movie that is a central element of the main character's feelings and use that as the title or reform it into a punchy metaphor. - just making suggestions, I can live with Beyond Limits