Reviewed by: El Mayimbe - 10.12.06
INFERNO
By
Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman
GRADE: B+ very very good
YO! Latinoreview’s alpha male EL MAYIMBE with a look at a potential blockbuster of a screenplay.
What if you combine THE DIRTY DOZEN, ARMAGEDDON and STARGATE?
You get INFERNO!
That is probably how the writers pitched it in the room. You can’t more high concept than that.
In terms of screenwriting, Armageddon is a textbook example in the use of REVERSALS. What is a reversal? Here is an example, Big Bad Guy charges Hero to fight, Hero pulls out knife — reversal — bad guy pulls out baseball bat — reversal — hero pulls out gun and has bad guy cornered — reversal — hero fires gun but is out of bullets or gun is jammed — REVERSAL! Get my drift? Think of reversals as plot twists which takes the story in other directions and provides our hero or in Inferno’s case heroes with obstacles to overcome all in the process of trying to solve the central question.
In Armageddon, the central question was whether the heroes will destroy the asteroid so YES they launch in space, NO (reversal) — they lose a shuttle, YES they arrive on the asteroid, NO (reversal) their gear is broken.
Armageddon was reversal city and it made the film fun and enjoyable, the action tight, and the plot organic as the heroes had one reversal thrust on top of another. What also made Armageddon fun in terms of their reversals was they each got bigger — hence driving up the stakes.
Got a screenwriting problem or are stuck in the 2nd act? Give your hero reversals to deal with. Easy Screenwriting 101 — Mayimbe style.
Like Armageddon, INFERNO is one hell of a ride with a similar premise. Instead of our heroes going into space, they have to go to ****ing hell — literally! Inferno was one hell of a page turning read. A high concept script with a capital H because of it’s successful execution of reversals. You see our heroes are not just heroes for heroes sake, but bad mother****ers literally who are destined to go to hell for whatever sins they each committed. If you haven’t committed a mortal sin and try to enter hell — you get vaporized as the military figures out in an early scene when they try. So the fate of humanity is dependent upon the actions on a rag tag group of hardened criminals who just don’t give a ****. The script is 138 pages and yes it is beyond proper screenplay length pero conyo **** happens in the 1st 5, 10, 20, and 30 pages that it kept me going. If you are going to write a 2 hour plus movie you better ****ing entertain me and entertain me it did.
So lets take a sneak peek...
80 miles south-southwest of Baghdad in Iraq, DR. CROWLEY stumbles upon a keyhole on these large metal doors at an excavation site. There is skeleton holding a key.
Dr. Crowley believes that he stands on the threshold of one of the greatest archaeological finds in history. He believes that with the simple turn of the key we will become witnesses to a secret unknown for over four thousand years.
Dumb move. He opens the ****ing gate — impenetrable blackness — and a rush of winged demons explode from the hole! Tens of thousands of these ****ers! Crowley falls into ****ing hell with the key in his hand!
What we find out is that Crowley opened Masad’s gate — the gate to hell.
We meet one of hell’s minion’s MALACODA, an 8ft whipcord-muscled demon mother****er who leads the demon’s as they storm over London, Armageddon style and turn the city and it’s habitants to ****. Destruction and the end of the world on a biblical level.
DR. RACHEL BEATRICE, 28 briefs the Pentagon, they send their elite commandoes to seal the gate and they get smoked like I said earlier.
Now all of what I described happens in the first 10 jodido pages!
At the next pentagon briefing with the President, the military tries to figure out how to close the gate and Rachel figures out from an inscription at the gate that those destined to go to hell, those who committed evil acts, are the ones who may enter Hell.
So who the hell is going to lead the dirty dozen into hell?
The Lee Marvin character JAMES DANTE, ex-special forces: captain of Green Berets. We meet him at Pelican Bay Maximum Security Penitentiary where he gets revenge on the bad guys who raped and killed his daughter. Prison Justice. Dante is destined for hell.
Rachel visits him in solitary and gives him his call to adventure. He accepts and starts to assemble his team. He needs an archaeologist. Someone who can interpret whatever writing or symbols they’re likely to find in hell. We meet ARNOLD “ARNIE” RUBINSTEIN in an Egyptian prison. His dig protocol got thirteen locals killed and he knew the ground was unstable but he persisted.
•Next we meet LENNY BALBO, who ran a meter maid off the road killing her.
•DOC KENDRICK who conducted sexual research on certain patients without their permission.
•KICK BOYD, a white supremacist
•THOMAS VIRGIL, a priest who killed a person being exorcised.
•Former defensive end, the Michael Clarke Duncan character ANDRE TREWORTHY of the New Orleans Saints, former two-time Pro bowler, league leader in sacks three years running and currently serving 60 years for three counts of voluntary manslaughter.
•SAMUEL H. ROSCOE a weasel of a man
•LOUIZ RAMIREZ, the Latino of the bunch serving two life terms for murder
•EZEKIEL SMITH, the only one of the cons who still professes his innocence.
•WORM, the Telly Savallas of the bunch and
•MICHAEL SARACEN, Former SEAL. Went on a drug-induced killing spree and subsequent high-speed chase across three states, ending in Texas. Scheduled to die next week by lethal injection.
Dante briefs all the cons and tells them that anyone surviving the mission will be granted a full pardon (Escape from New York anyone?). The cons raise their right hands, get sworn in as members of U.S. Armed Forces and the strangest assortment of characters in history promise to ‘protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’
End Act 1 on page 31 and the start the training montage of Act 2.
So as it stands now, the project is at Warner’s and supposed to be produced by Joel Silver. From what I hear though, INFERNO is being put into turnaround which makes absolutely no sense because the script is that kick ass and for sure a summer tentpole for the right studio. For more on Inferno, pick up the couple of issues of the comic that Top Cow put out. It’s hot.
Speaking of Dirty Dozens, check back next week when we take a look at another bunch of desperadoes when we take a look at David Ayer’s CARTEL — a remake of THE WILD BUNCH!
HASTA EL PROXIMO CAPITULO...
...YO SOY EL MAYIMBE!
