Lesson 1

[William Whiteford]

😎

[Ann Jordan]

Ann Jordan
GET OUT – 2017, director Jordan Peele
Genre: Horror Thriller
(THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS!)

What I learned from doing this assignment:

– Character is key. We need to care about our protagonist because that makes us worry, and become emotionally invested in what happens to them.
– Scary, startling, or suspenseful moments should be inserted in the story at appropriate intervals, like a leitmotif that calls us back over and over, and keeps us hooked into the story. However, these moments don’t have to be constant (at least until the end) and should be leavened with character development and a little humor here and there.
– The antagonist shouldn’t be so unrealistic that it takes us out of the story. One of the best moments in GET OUT was from the character of Jim Hudson, played by the great Stephen Root, as he matter-of-factly explained what was going on and let Chris know he wasn’t at all concerned what Chris thought about it. Chris was just a tool to Jim, a means to an end, and it was more realistic and chilling seeing that, than any amount of Snidely Whiplash preening.
– Unexpected (but grounded) revelations and reversals are great because they keep us on the edge of our seats.

The Thriller Conventions Used in GET OUT:

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero:
Chris, an attractive black man who is in what he thinks is a promising relationship with his white girlfriend, Rose.
Dangerous Villain:
There’s actually a group of villains, among whom the chief is Rose’s mom, Missy. But Missy turns out to take second place in villainy to her daughter, Rose. Rose could possibly be characterized as a Red Herring, since we think she will help Chris until close to the end.
High stakes: Chris is desperate to escape the evil fate of being turned into a half-aware zombie, able to see and hear, but unable to speak or act for himself.

Life and death situations:
The director skillfully sprinkles life and death situations throughout, keeping up tension until the final act, when the tension explodes.

– The film opens with a white-on-black kidnapping, and it’s implied that the black man is killed.
– As Rose and Chris are driving to visit her parents, a deer leaps in front of their car, causing a startling accident. (Chris tracks down the deer in the woods, which has died, and we wonder if Chris’s death is being foreshadowed.)
– The police officer that responds to the deer accident scene asks for Chris’s ID, bullying him, and we wonder if we’re going to see a police brutality incident.
– When Missy hypnotizes Chris the first time, he’s psychologically hurled down into a dark, empty space, and it appears that he might die.
– Much of the second act is Chris meeting jovial white people and Stepford Wife black servants who are so friendly that they’re frightening, but not overtly dangerous. The exception is when Chris tries to make friends with the groundskeeper, who is slinging an axe around and clearly trying to intimidate Chris.
– In the third act, after Chris is unwillingly hypnotized again, he awakes, bound hand and foot. Obviously life or death.
– After Chris stops answering his phone, his friend Rod, who works for the TSA and has faith in law enforcement, goes to the police. We think at first that the police are interested in Rod’s story of Chris’s disappearance and will help, but then realize the police are all laughing at Rod. We see that the cops’ indifference could result in Chris’s death.
– Chris is informed to his face that his body is going to be harvested (zombified) and used as a vehicle for an old rich white guy’s brain.
– Chris finds a way to escape his bonds, but then has to fight his way out of the mansion’s basement, past several people who are willing to kill him to shut him up, if they can’t manage to keep him as zombie material. (This consists of several short but great battles.) Lots of life or death.
– At the end, when Chris has finally vanquished or nullified all the people who want to kill him or zombify him, a cop car shows up, and the wounded, duplicitous Rose cries out to the police for help against Chris. We realize that a cop might well shoot the exhausted Chris on the spot, or arrest him (in which case he could possibly be released back to the rest of the zombifying gang, and he might lose his freedom and his brain after all). It’s a scary, tense life-or-death moment. It’s resolved when we see that the cop car is a TSA Police car, and Chris’s friend Rod steps out of the car to rescue Chris.

This movie is thrilling because?
It’s thrilling because we’re introduced to likeable, interesting characters who we quickly begin to care about, and then we're quickly forced to worry about them being horribly abused or dying.

3. What is the BIG Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of this story?

Big Mystery: By agreeing to stay with Rose’s family for the weekend, has Chris walked into a dangerous situation? Is he as threatened as he feels? Or is his wariness toward white people making him paranoid?
Big Intrigue: Why are Rose’s family and friends so over-the-top friendly to Chris, and yet also so awkward, odd, and vaguely predatory? What is their plan for him? Can Chris use the other black people on the property and at the party to discover their plans?
Big Suspense: Does Rose know what’s really going on with her family? Is Rose a part of her family’s horrifying machinations? Will Rose defy her family and save the man she loves – if, that is, she actually loves him? Will Chris find a way to survive, with or without Rose’s help?

4. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great thriller?

– I felt that GET OUT added an enriching emotional layer by delving into Chris’s childhood trauma. The reason that Missy gets Chris to reveal his childhood angst is purely so she can use it against him, but it makes us feel that much more for our protagonist, and really care about whether he makes it out safely.
– GET OUT also had some humorous moments, mostly connected with Chris’s friend Rod, which grew fairly organically from Rod’s personality and his relationship with Chris (as opposed to adding jokes or bits, as such). The addition of humor kept the whole thing from bogging down from the weight of its own paranoia.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by  Ann Jordan. Reason: This forum keeps turning my writing into ONE HUGE paragraph. I have to figure out how to create paragraph breaks so that it's not horrible to read!

[William Whiteford]

Subject Line: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Thriller Conventions

In this assignment, I explored the key elements the essence and conventions of the genre, including their definitions, functions, and major components. In addition – the screenwriting techniques associated with thrillers, such as betrayal, twists, anticipation, and surprise.

1. BIG MYSTERY: What happened to Harriet Vanger, who disappeared 40 years ago in 1966?

BIG INTRIGUE: Her brother, Martin Vanger, appears to be a good man and a trustworthy ally to the investigator Mikael Blomkvist. However, he is eventually revealed as a ruthless serial killer and rapist, but not until sequence F (page 115 of the screenplay).

BIG SUSPENSE: After identifying Martin as the prime suspect, Mikael searches Martin’s empty house at night, only to confront him unexpectedly in the yard. Suddenly, Mikael finds himself in a life-threatening situation – his hell starts.

2. Lisbeth Salander, Mikael’s assistant, is a unique character who solves problems in her own shocking, deadly way. She creates an unsettling atmosphere around her and heightens the tension throughout the story.

[William Whiteford]

Assignment 1 Revision
Student: William Whiteford
Subject: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011) – Best Adapted Screenplay by Steven Zaillian, based on the book by Stieg Larsson (166 pages).
Genre: Thriller

What I Learned from this Assignment:
In completing this assignment, I gained insight into the core elements of the thriller genre, particularly from a writer’s perspective. A thriller’s primary function is to deliver a gripping, edge-of-your-seat experience by setting up a battle between the protagonist(s) and their adversary(ies). This is achieved through the use of mystery, intrigue, suspense, betrayal, tension, and unexpected twists. For a story to meet the genre’s conventions and satisfy audience expectations, it must incorporate these elements. The creation of the protagonist and antagonist is crucial: the protagonist must be resourceful and fully committed to their mission, while the antagonist should be menacing and truly evil.

Conventions of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo:
Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), co-owner of Millennium magazine, is an experienced journalist with a sharp investigative mind and advanced technological skills.

Dangerous Villain: Martin Vanger, Henrik’s nephew and the head of the Vanger Group of companies, initially poses as Mikael’s ally. However, in Sequence F, he reveals his true nature as a cruel, sadistic serial rapist and killer by trapping Mikael in a basement.

High Stakes: Mikael’s survival is in jeopardy when Martin traps him. Additionally, his reputation and quest to clear his name hang in the balance throughout the story.

Life and Death Situations: In the basement, Martin incapacitates Mikael with gas, places a noose around his neck, and interrogates him, prepared to kill him at any moment.

Why This Movie is Thrilling: The audience is intellectually engaged by the ongoing investigation—what happened to Harriet Vanger?—and emotionally invested as the tension escalates with each attempt on Mikael’s life. The unexpected revelation that Harriet is still alive provides a shocking twist in the third act.

Big Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of the Story:
Big Mystery: What happened to Harriet Vanger, who disappeared 40 years ago in 1966?

Big Intrigue: Martin Vanger, who appears to be a trustworthy ally to Mikael Blomkvist, is later revealed to be a ruthless serial killer and rapist. This revelation doesn’t occur until Sequence F (page 115 of the screenplay).

Big Suspense: After identifying Martin as the prime suspect, Mikael searches Martin’s empty house at night. Their unexpected confrontation in the yard escalates the tension, thrusting Mikael into a life-threatening situation.

What Made This Movie a Great Thriller:
The movie’s success as a thriller is rooted in its overwhelming aura of mystery, its surprising reveals, and its dramatic twists. The narrative tackles serious issues, such as serial killings and financial fraud, adding social relevance to the tension. Additionally, the character of Lisbeth Salander, Mikael’s assistant, is unique in her problem-solving methods—her shocking and deadly approach creates an unsettling atmosphere that heightens the story’s tension throughout.

[Liz Holliday]

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

1) What I learned doing this assignment is –

A) It’s not enough for the antagonists to have an existing plan – it needs to be one that would have fulfilled their needs if the hero had not stepped in. (In the case of The Manchurian Candidate, the villains make great use of the hero – whose mind they have taken over – to achieve their final aim: the assassination of the President of the United States, so that his Vice President – also controlled by them – can take over his place and further their interests. But what wasn’t clear to me was who the assassin would have been if Ben Marco hadn’t stepped in. Would they have sought him out in order to ‘activate’ him anyway? Were they planning to use the subsidiary character Melvin – one of the other soldiers they experimented on – for this purpose?

B) The antagonists’ plan needs to stand up to scrutiny – is it a reasonable and sensible way for them to achieve their underlying goals? If there’s a simpler way to do it – cheaper, less prone to go wrong, less dangerous – why didn’t they do that instead? (It is not clear to me why they needed a ‘controlled’ elite soldier to carry out the assassination attempt – the way the attempt was set up, any decent shot could have done it. It also wasn’t clear to me why they had to kidnap an entire squad (platoon?) of soldiers on foreign soil, given that they have all the equipment in the USA and it can be set up in a hotel room (as we can see when they operate on Shaw, the veteran from the squadron who is now the Vice President). Finally, it’s not clear to me what they would have achieved if their plan had gone off flawlessly. The orders they were able to give the activated soldiers seemed quite basic – go here, open this door, kill that person. When they tried to do anything more complex, the results weren’t convincing – for instance, all the men they experimented on used exactly the same language to describe their fake experience of wandering lost in the desert. I’m sure that if the President of the USA repeated himself word-for-word on multiple occasions people would notice.

C) If at any point, viewers find themselves thinking ‘but why didn’t they just do X’, that’s probably a sign that the antagonist’s plan doesn’t meet the points set out in points 1 and 2. (Sadly, I found myself thinking exactly that at many points during this film.)

D) If the writer sets up a rule that works at all other points, the hero can’t just overcome that rule in order to get the outcome they – or the writer – want. Either the rule has to work all the time or the writer has to explain (or, better, show) how it can be broken and by whom. (In the end, Ben Marco has been activated and sent to kill the President of the USA. But with no real explanation given, he is able to resist his orders, and instead of killing the President he kills the Vice President and the VP’s mother, Ellie – the real villain in all of this. But previous to this, no one is shown being able to resist the orders.)

E) Character development should not just come out of nowhere at the last moment. (Deep in the third act, the dominating and cloying relationship between Ellie – the real villain in all this – and her son (Shaw, the veteran and presumptive VP) turns incestuous. To make it worse, Shaw is under the control of his mother. None of this is foreshadowed.

2) Thriller Conventions

A) Unwitting but resourceful hero: Ben Marco is a tough and determined army veteran with command experience. In addition to physical skills, he is decisive and analytical. These intellectual skills come to the fore as he tries to work out the core of his problem – what really happened to him and his men after they were ambushed during a patrol in Iraq – and make his mental breakdown all the more horrifying.

B) Dangerous villain: The Manchurian Corporation are led – or so it seems at first – by a group of businessmen who want to control the President so they can basically do whatever they want and make billions while they’re doing it. Later, it turns out they are pretty much controlled by Ellie, the mother of Vice President Shaw. However, her motives are slightly less clear – she really seems to think she has the best interests of America at heart. The film would have been more interesting if this aspect of her motivation had been investigated more incisively.

C) High stakes: For the hero, the stakes are his life, sanity and career. But the future of America and its democracy are also in danger, and arguably the fate of the rest of the world as well.

D) Life and Death Situations: Ben Marco’s life and sanity are in danger from the moment he is approached by Melvin, who has worked out that his recurring nightmares are a sign that events in Iraq did not play out in the way the surviving soldiers thought it did. Rebuffed at every turn, Ben loses his army commission and his grip on reality appears to be sliding away. In one of the best sequences in the film, he is on a train when he is unexpectedly approached by the checkout assistant from the supermarket he goes to regularly. Things get very strange when Ben has some kind of breakdown and fantasizes that she’s been shot – that he shot her. This emphasizes the fact that he can no longer be sure of the dividing line between waking and dreaming, delusion and reality. But despite this, the girl – Rosie – offers to help him. The oddness of that is one reason why it’s easy to buy into the belief Ben develops later: that she is working for the villains and is a danger to him. There’s a whiplash moment when she reveals that in fact she’s an FBI agent who has been keeping him under surveillance. She helps him, but she can’t stop him from being activated because all it takes is the correct sequence of words – it’s never made clear whether they have to be spoken by one of the villains or that they would work if anyone said them – which can said to his face or on the phone.

E) This movie is thrilling because: Despite my reservations about some aspects of the plot, I came to care about Ben Marco and the dilemma he finds himself in (arguably this might have been more because of Denzel Washington’s performance than the script). There were plenty of moments of true peril, but for me the most effective sequences were those involving Ben Marco’s disorientation and attempts to discern reality from delusion.

3 MIS

A) Big Mystery: Ben Marco must learn the truth about what happened to him and his men after they were ambushed in Iraq.
B) Big Intrigue: Why were the soldiers kidnapped and experimented on, and how do the villains plan to use them?
C) Big Suspense: Is there anyone Ben Marco can really trust? Can he even trust his own memory and perception of reality? Above all, how can he prevail against the villains when he can so easily be controlled by them?

4) Anything else?
Sadly, I didn’t think this was a great thriller. I thought it was a good one, as long as I was prepared not to think too hard about the underlying issues (which is to say, I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t been watching it for the purposes of this exercise!) I really felt that a lot of my problems with it could have been sorted out with a bit more thought and development… or maybe I just missed explanations that were there all along.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 2 weeks ago by  Liz Holliday.

[William Peed]

MIke

I watched The Lost City which I've been wanting to see because I Romancing The Stone is one of my favorite movies ever, and it seemed like this was heavily indebted.

What I learned: I should have just watched Romancing The Stone! I kid. Kinda. I did learn the importance of the mystery, especially concerning the villain's plan. He definitely had a goal, was ruthless in achieving it, willing to kill anyone who stood in his way, but there was no real mystery to it.

1. Unwitting Hero – Sandy Bullock is a failed academic turned successful romance novelist (THE Joan WIlder?!?!) who's so depressed from the death of her husband. that she announces her decision to kill off the character based on him. Which happens right before the very moment when she is kidnapped by the —

2. Dangerous VIllian – Daniel Radcliffe as a rich, shiftless when idle dilettante searching for ancient artifacts, one of which just happens to be featured in Sandy's new book —

3. High Stakes — She is kidnapped, tied up, taken away to a volcanic island where she is forced to translate scraps of an ancient language that will lead the villain to the Crown Of Fire. Channing Tatum, the cove model who plays the character based on her dead husband, sets out to save her life, and maybe, improbably, against all odds, maybe even her love life!

4. Life and Death Situations — a kidnapping, an active volcano, a rescue attempt with shootings, explosions and death, a car chase through the jungle, a cliff, a leech filled river, more chasing and shooting, a mountain, more chasing and shooting, caves, another cliff and a coffin.

5. This movie is thrilling because there is a lot of life and death situations. The Villain is well resourced and relentless in pursuit of his goal. I think the misfire was that there was no Big Mystery to it. There was never really a moment when you wondered why, or how he planned on achieving his goal.

3 MIS

1. Big Mystery — I don't know that there was one. Will she find the Crown? I guess. Will she find love? Probably. But that wasn’t particularly thrilling

2. Big Intrigue — I think this was where the movie failed. I don't know that there was anything covert or underhanded about the villain’s plot. It was pretty straightforward. If anything, the intrigue was whether Sandy will be able to overcome her dislike of Channing Tatum long enough to find the Crown and survive?

3. Big Suspense — Will they be able to outsmart the villain?

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  William Peed.

[CHRISTOPHER WEBB]

Movie: Anon Thriller Conventions

What I learned doing this assignment:

What doesn’t work, even when the thrills are there. While the movie is thrilling it is completely devoid of depth. There is no catharsis. No deep meaning. No thoughtful provocation to come from it.

A hero requires a unique resourcefulness to stand out. Our cop is a detective first class with access to advanced technology… but every cop has access to the same advanced technology. Nothing about this hero makes him the only one or the special one, or the uniquely skilled one to partake of this mission. He might be the best man for the job. He might not be. And while he is skilled and a good detective, we don’t know any relative scale towards his other cops. You could have plugged in any other cop to get the job done and the movie doesn’t suffer.

The Villain needs great motivation: “Thanos was right” If you’ve never watched the Marvel Avengers movie franchise, Thanos is a villain who believes that the universe’s resources are finite and half of all life must be extinguished so that the other half can thrive. That is what caused his own planet, Titan, to be destroyed. “Too many mouths, not enough to go around,” in the Villain’s own words. Disjointed as his philosophy is, it served as great motivation for him to do the horrible things he did. —> —> —> In this movie, the killer only killed those who could identify him. The hidden killer killed to stay hidden. Survival is as good a motivator as anything, but not when you’re already hidden and impossible to find by even the police. And the killer could erase memories, so why not erase the memories of those he came in contact with?

Red Herrings are easier to spot if you know what to look for: Early in the movie, the hero cop walks the street and everyone he sees has their full bio on display… except for a mysterious woman. Later the hero cop goes undercover and meets the ‘ghost’ , who is the woman from earlier who didn’t have her information accessible. We’re made to believe that she is the killer. She even has the same gun as the killer and wears the same gloves as the killer. It was too obvious she was not the killer. At the end of the movie when the killer is revealed, it has actually less impact because the misdirect was so obvious we knew it had to be someone else. And so when that killer was revealed it was like “oh… well I knew it wasn’t her."

Premise – In a future where everyone is embedded with technology that enables people to see and record everything with their eyes, store it, and share it.. a cop find himself in the center of a murder mystery when a serial killer is able to move about this future world undetected. Can the cop stop the killer who cannot be seen?

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Sal Frieland – A detective first class who stumbles into a murder case where future technology cannot aid him. In a world where everything and everyone is captured and quantified on video, the villain manages to kill without being noticed.
Our hero is clever, brave, and has good intuition, but is outclassed by the smarter, more devious villain.

Dangerous Villain: Cyrus Frear – An expert hacker hired by the police department to find out how the serial killer is able to bypass the governmental monitoring tracking software and move about undetected. Already being smarter than the cops and a few steps ahead, working on the inside gives him even more of an advantage. He is able to understand how they think, operate, and plan. He sees the flaws in their software and is able to keep an eye on everything that way. He even sets up another person a “ghost” in the software for the crime. He is only caught (and summarily killed) when the hero teams up with the “ghost” being framed for the killings and they lay a trap for him.

High stakes: Lives are at risk. But also, the software the government uses to keep crime down and monitor everything is at stake. If the software were to go down, the belief is that the world at large would be thrown into the rampant crime and lawlessness of the previous century (our current century).

Life and death situations: 6 murders were committed including a Lester Hagen, a good cop who was the main one assisting the hero.

This movie is thrilling because? From the time the mystery starts, almost every scene is about the mystery. The ones that aren’t have to do with the personal trauma of the hero detective who lost his son due to negligence. You are either enthralled by the mysterious killer enthralled by the detective’s own personal mysteries. Then, when new and important characters are introduced, they have their own personal mysteries.

3. What is the BIG Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of this story?

Big Mystery: Who is the serial killer who cant be seen by either camera or naked eye?
Big Intrigue: How does the villain manipulate the technology in order to bypass the most advanced security system. The ability to create a system that allows him to disappear from the grid took years to create.
Big Suspense: The hero becomes the killers final target. The villain hijacks the technology in the hero’s eyes to constantly have the hero see things that are not there. Not only is the killer invisible, but the hero can’t trust his own eyes.

4. Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great thriller?
A: The unreliable narrator aspect of the movie is well done. In this world our eyes digitize everything and it is stored as a memory file. But when those files are erased… is your life erased? What if all your precious memories could be wiped away… who would you be. This movie explores that for the hero and it makes good for amping up the thrills when the hero is slowly being driven mad by the overtaking of his memories and his complete visual impairment.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  CHRISTOPHER WEBB.
• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  CHRISTOPHER WEBB. Reason: Edit: underlining, italicizing, and bolding

[Antonia Roman]

"Above Suspicion" Thriller Conventions

I learned during this assignment to analyze character arcs, plot, and specific key elements to build the storyline.

Conventions of THIS story.

Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: FBI Agent

Dangerous Villain: Informant

High stakes: FBI agent breaks the code of honor to catch a robber and drug dealer.

Life and death situations: Informat’s brother tries to kill one of the drug dealers, drug dealers try to burn down the FBI agent’s house, and the fight between the FBI agent and informant in the car leads to the informant’s death.

This movie is thrilling because? What is the villain going to do next to take revenge on the FBI agent?

3. What is this story's BIG Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense?

Big Mystery: Will the FBI agent break the law to solve the cases?

Big Intrigue: Love triangle takes the FBI over the edge.

Big Suspense: Will the villain get what she wants, to have a happily ever after with the FBI agent?

Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great thriller? Some twists and turns kept me engaged in watching it.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  Antonia Roman. Reason: It's all clumped together when I post it

[Diane Caldwell]

Day 1 Assignment “Blow Out”

“Blow Out” (1981) Thriller Conventions

What I learned doing this assignment is by focusing on the mystery, intrigue and suspense of the story as I watched it, it was easier for me to pick up on little snippets of dialogue, movement and other aspects of the film that helped reveal these three thriller conventions so I can be mindful of how I drop clues of the mystery, intrigue and suspense for viewers in my screenplays without giving too much information in any one scene, so viewers can put together the pieces of my puzzle.

SPOILER ALERT!

In “Blow Out,” when sound engineer Jack Terry is trying to get some sound effects for the latest sleazy slasher film of a Philadelphia film producer, he witnesses a car accident resulting in the governor’s car careening into a river. He quickly jumps in the river and saves the life of Sally, a young woman with the governor, now a presidential candidate, in the car at the time of his death, and soon discovers the makings of a political scandal, realizing that Sally’s life could be in danger.

Conventions of this story:

-Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Jack Terry (John Travolta), sound engineer for a Philadelphia film producer who makes low-budget sleazy horror movies.

-Dangerous Villain: Burke (John Lithgow) a killer who believes he is working to assist a possible presidential candidate.

-High stakes: A car accident that takes one life early in the film; several Sally look-a-likes are murdered, Sally meeting a man she believes is a television show host but is really Burke; John losing Sally after discovering the man she met with is actually Burke.

-Main emotions expressed in this film: Tension, uncertainty, anticipation, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness

-Life and death situations: Car accident early in the movie, murders of several Sally look-a-likes, Sally meeting Burke at the train station, Sally and Burke being surrounding by participants in a parade with Jack no longer unable to watch Sally; Jack driving wildly through the parade to get to her.

-This movie is thrilling because: It moves quickly and reveals bits and pieces of the mystery, intrigue and suspense as the story progresses, prompting viewers to want to figure out what is really going on in the story.

What is the BIG Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of this story?

• Big Mystery: Who shot the tire of the governor’s car and why?
• Big Intrigue: Who, if anyone, is associated with Burke in his evil deeds?
• Big Suspense: Will Jack be able to help protect Sally, the woman whose life he saved early in the film, as he discovers the car accident he witnessed and recorded (sound only) was really an assassination?

Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great thriller? The pacing was fast, but not too fast, so viewers can tune into little nuggets revealing the story and its characters, and the acting was great by everyone in this film. I think it’s one of Travolta’s best performances. It’s currently available on Amazon Prime.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  Diane Caldwell.

[Christine Torres]

Thriller Assignment #1 – Conventions of a Thriller

NO WAY OUT (1987) – A coverup and witch hunt occur after a politician accidentally kills his mistress. (imdb).
By Chris Torres

What I learned doing this assignment is – pacing is everything.

• Unwitting but Resourceful Hero: Navy Lt. Tom Farrell – falls in love with the wrong woman. But does he really?
• Dangerous Villain: Scott Pritchard – Chief Assistant to the Secretary of Defense.
• High stakes: When the Secretary accidentally kills his mistress, Pritchard becomes the architect of a coverup which misdirects the investigation pointing to another lover, a KGB mole. Problem is that Tom is that other lover. And he is in charge of the investigation, reporting to Pritchard, his college friend who got him this cushy post.
• Life and death situations: The mistress dies. Everyone is desperate enough to kill to protect their respective secrets.
• This movie is thrilling because? At every turn, there are secrets and contradictions. Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Tension escalates throughout. With a big final twist at the end.

What is the BIG Mystery, Intrigue, and Suspense of this story?
• Big Mystery: Tom needs to expose the Secretary before he is exposed as the lover and traitor.
• Big Intrigue: Pritchard wants to protect the Secretary at all costs. Even though he has no idea that Tom is the one he is framing for murder and as the KGB mole.
• Big Suspense: He must hide his identity as the lover of his boss’ mistress, because once revealed, he will be framed for her murder and accused of being a KGB mole.

Anything else you’d like to say about what made this movie a great thriller?
A very young Kevin Costner gives a great performance as Tom, opposite Sean Young (The Mistress), Gene Hackman (The Secretary), and Will Patton (The Villain). An amazing cast directed by Roger Donaldson, screenplay by Robert Garland.
Right from the opening credits, the soundtrack by Maurice Jarre, sets the tones as he starts you off with a feeling of tension and unease…
You can argue that Tom is the villain here and Pritchard is the unwitting hero. But I chose Tom as the hero, even though he is ultimately revealed to be the KGB mole, under what was very unfortunate circumstances. Tom is the one who tries to save the innocent bystanders and civilians while Pritchard is a very unscrupulous character, willing to do anything to save his boss.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 1 week ago by  Christine Torres.