Victor Grippi – The Atomic Writer

There’s an old adage in the screenwriting world, “grab the reader in the first 10 pages”. It refers to what’s needed to sell a script in today’s highly competitive market. Based on the sheer number of scripts written each year; movie executives could not possibly attempt to read even a fraction of these. So they employ readers, to provide what is known as coverage on a prospective script. A Hollywood reader given this daunting task must make a pass/fail decision based on several story elements. The key to succeeding in this environment is to grab the reader’s attention early and keep them turning pages all the way to the end.

This is certainly the case in Law Abiding Citizen. In fact, on the second page the family is attacked by a home invasion and the story takes off from there. We meet Gerald Butler’s character, the father, soldering some electronic device with a magnifying glass, while his daughter makes bracelets in the living room. They both seem very happy and we begin to like the father because he pays attention to his child and the child reciprocates her love to him. We feel empathy for him. Almost immediately the home invasion occurs and instantly we feel sympathy for him for the tragedy occurring to his family. These are all tools a screenwriter uses to help the audience, or reader, connect and invest in the protagonist. We care what happens to him.

Later, we meet the Jamie Fox lawyer character who works for the DA. Here we are shown a driven man eager to move up the ladder no matter what it takes. He believes that the ends justify the means, and is more concerned about having a high conviction rate than doing what is right. We see him bouncing down a spiral staircase, a metaphor for descending down into a corrupt world, with his boss the DA. The message slipped in here is this: The justice system is corrupt and it doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what you can prove in court. Jamie lives by this philosophy. During the staircase scene, we learn he has made a deal with the killers of the mother and daughter, and must tell the father the news.

This story has two protagonists who each are presented in a different light. Both will have transformational arcs taking them to different emotional places by the end of the movie, although they are in the physical place. The writer, Kurt Whimmer, skillfully weaves this story together by creating a statement against the judicial system by creating complex characters who represent this system. By personifying pillars of the system in characters like the DA, the police, the major, the warden, we the audience become emotionally invested and subconsciously open up to the message.

By routing for and feeling empathy for the Gerald Butler character, who we believe has been done wrong, and then feeling sympathy for the Jamie fox character, the target of the masterful ploys of his prisoner, we are in a constant emotional tug-o-war. Does justice prevail, or do the means justify the ends? This creates a fertile breeding ground for the writer to reveal cracks in the system without standing on a soapbox. The goal of a successful screenplay is to slip your message to the viewer/reader without him knowing about it. Law Abiding Citizen does this wonderfully on multiple levels.

To recap we have one protagonist who has been deeply wounded by the brutal death of his wife and daughter. We learn he is a master of weapon technologies and could skin a lion in his sleep. This skill allows him the opportunity to get revenge not only on the killers but on the system itself. In the process he destroys himself. He is the classic anti-hero.

To recap the second protagonist, we have a driven lawyer who believes the ends justify the means and will do anything to get a conviction. He has no time for his daughter and takes his family for granted. This diametrically opposes the other protagonist. Their character arcs collide and create an effect on each other. In the process this character learns to not make anymore deals with criminals, and to get closer to his family.

This is the classic dual protagonist scenario where one is the hero and the other the anti-hero. BRAVO to Kurt Whimmer for giving us an excellent story.

Remember, never stop looking up into the night sky and asking, what if.

Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer

p.s. My screenplay, Privileged Voice is currently a semi-finalist in the 2009 Writers On The Storm screenplay competition. Wish me luck!