THE STAGE 32 LOGLINES

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A FATHER'S PRAYER
By Steven Blows

GENRE: Action, Crime
LOGLINE:

After a botched drug raid results in the accidental death of his son by his own hand, a grieving cop seeks revenge on the gang who put a gun in his hand and a mask on his face. 

SYNOPSIS:

Topias (30's) makes dinner for his wife Maggie (30's) and son (Noah (17). He serves two plates and a Tupperware bowl for himself. Noah declines the dinner and leaves to meet some friends. Noah questions his new friend's motives and the pair argue, Noah claiming that his father isn't around enough and Topias that he is working as a cop to keep the streets safe for him. Noah slams the door as he leaves.

Topias and his task force ready for an upcoming drug bust. Elsewhere, Noah and other teenage sellers arrive at a drug dealer in a back alley street. The dealer claims that the streets are talking tonight and hands them each a gun. Noah looks nervous as he takes it. After a night of selling, he returns to the dealer at the same time that his father's task force arrives on the scene ready to arrest the dealer and his gang. Noah pulls down his mask. A firefight ensues and the dealer pushes Noah into the line of fire. It looks as if Noah raising his gun towards Topias. Topias shoots the masked figure as the dealer gets away. Topias searches the injured and removes the mask from the man he shot to discover to his sheer terror that it is Noah.

Topias's life falls apart. He quits his job, stops being a husband and his wife leaves him, he moves into a cheap crummy apartment, and he drinks himself to sleep each night. Even the words of his ex-partner Scott about the blame not being his fail to reach him. One night Topias puts a gun in his mouth but decides not to shoot when he remembers the smug face of the dealer as he pushed Noah and ran away. He decides that he will not die unless that man and anyone related to his gang die.

Topias cleans his apartment and trains mentally and physically for the task ahead which begins with as he kills a seller and his protection. He sees a dropped invite to an invite-only poker game. Following this lead, he pretends to be a criminal and enters the underground poker game. He kills the men in varying gruesome ways but leaves one alive as he needs a location of the distribution centre, the place the dealer used to run. He puts out a cigar in the man's bullet hole to torture the information out. The man tells him, but Topias kills him anyway.

The next night he surveys the site, the night after he returns and kills everyone in sight in brutal fashion. He discovers the new dealer isn’t there. He forces the dealer’s address out of a man he makes count to his own death from 10.

Following his lead from the poker game, Topias takes the new dealer (Manny) from his house in the dead of night. He takes him to a meat warehouse and tortures him for information. He gets the information and will use him to set up a meeting with Bulldog in two days. Topias leaves him screaming with nothing more than some water and sandwiches.

The next day he goes to Scott’s daughter’s birthday party and the theme of family and letting go of vengeance is touched on.

Topias’s own demons compel him to move forward with this sinful quest for revenge. He wakes from nightmares of his son's killing and drinks the night away at a bar where he fights random men to feel something. The fight leaves him with bruised ribs and he collapses onto a pile of rubbish. He sees his son in his dream telling him to get up. He wakes to see two men who know him as the vigilante killing their friends and attempt to jump him. He fights them off and leaves.

The arranged set-up with the dealer arrives and Topias uses his old police equipment and knowledge to make the jump on the dealer and his gang of thugs. The fight starts with a sniper from above but moves closer when Topias is forced by gunfire to move closer. Topias is caught off guard by two thugs and is told to drop his gun. He does so but pulls out a hidden gun (Noah's gun) and shoots them leaving him one on one with the dealer. The two fight with their fists. The dealer pulls out a knife. Topias picks up a nearby chain. Topias grabs a hold of the dealer and begins to chock him. As he loses his air and life, the dealer shanks Topias repeatedly. Topias lies dying surrounded by dead criminals. As Scott and police arrive on the scene, he remembers his son on a pier in the bright sunshine as the two eat candy floss and laugh together.

Nathaniel Baker

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