BREAKING POINT
Dirty Harry and Clean Harry in the 21st Century.
A Synopsis in 2600 Words
Ninety-year-old Harry Callahan Senior - aka Dirty Harry - believes his 34-year-old son Harry Callahan Junior - aka Clean Harry - is "too full o’ the milk of human kindness" to be a police inspector in an increasingly populated, complicated, politically-correct, violent, defund-the-police, screw-up-and-go-to-prison world. Where Harry Callahan Senior went after bad guys like a mid-century Wyatt Earp, this millennial Harry Callahan Junior PhD is an educated, hyper-smart, Stanford PhD “techtective” who drives a Tesla CYBRTRCK almost as tricked out as James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5 - but instead of oil slicks and ejector seats, Junior’s CYBRTRCK is loaded with drones and DNA scanners and night vision goggles, ALPR, Biometrics and other 21st Century gizmos: Clean Harry prefers brains and tech to bullets and violence.
To paraphrase Prince Faisal from Lawrence of Arabia: “With Clean Harry, mercy is a passion.” He is obsessed with the gizmos, techniques and philosophies of non-lethal apprehension of suspects: tasers, gases, nets, bean bag rounds, stun grenades-anything to avoid doing what his father did so avidly: Shooting people.
Clean Harry’s loyalties, nerves and philosophies are put to the test when his first assignment is investigating the brutal killing and violence brought upon the local vagrant/drug/thief population of Santa Cruz - by unknown, shockingly-violent vigilantes who want to clean up the town.
Is the violence being done by a Kemper/Mullins/Frasier psycho killer wannabe? Are homeless people being killed by other homeless people competing for space? Is it rogue cops? Is it pissed-off, citizens fed up with drugs and trash and theft taking the law into their own hands?
The people of Santa Cruz have reached a breaking point, and Harry Callahan Jr. gets caught in the middle of a meth-fueled war between vigilantes and vagrants - will Clean Harry be Dirtied by this conflict? Will Clean Harry turn into Dirty Harry and use his father’s .44 magnum- the most powerful handgun in the world - to bring peace and justice to Santa Cruz?
11-13-19 5-18-20 6-15-20 5-10-21 5-27-21
Library of Congress Registration PAu 4-036-238 (8-10-2020)
Ben Marcus - www.benmarcusrules.com - thebenmalibu@gmail.com
424 422-8435
"It's fun, once in a while, to have a character you can go back to.
It's like revisiting an old friend you haven't seen for a long time.
You figure 'I'll go back and see how he feels about things now'."
Clint Eastwood from "Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner" (1992)
Ninety-year-old Harry Callahan Senior - aka Dirty Harry - believes his 34-year-old son Harry Callahan Junior PhD - aka Clean Harry - is "too full o’ the milk of human kindness" to be a SFPD Inspector in this increasingly populated, complicated, politically-correct, violent, defund-the-police, screw-up-and- go-to-prison 21st Century.
Where Harry Callahan Senior went after bad guys like Wyatt Earp - shoot first, read the Miranda Rights if they survive - this millennial Harry Callahan Junior PhD is an educated, hyper-smart, Stanford PhD “techtective” who prefers brains and tech to bullets and violence.
Scott Eastwood’s Harry “Clean Harry” Callahan Junior character is based a bit on his Trevor James character in Snowden - a clean, by the books tech-savvy dude.
Senior doesn’t understand why Junior would want to be a cop when his Stanford PhD could be making him millions in Silicon Valley and he could be dating supermodels. But Junior is compelled to be a cop for the same buried reasons as his father: Duty, action, sense of justice.
Junior doesn’t want to sit at a desk hacking out code as the world passes him by.
He wants to help people and he wants to make the world a safer place.
And he craves action. Adrenaline. Danger.
When confronted by Senior to explain his decision to become a cop, Junior says: “It’s complicated.” And shrugs: “I like complicated.”
“It’s complicated” is Junior’s standard answer when he can’t answer something personal, or doesn’t want to answer:
“How is your relationship with your father?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Why do you want to be a cop in the 21st Century?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Why do you like surfing Ocean Beach and getting your ass kicked?”
“It’s complicated.”
Senior is proud that Junior has made Inspector in the SFPD, but he also worries that the politically-correct Junior will hesitate when it’s time to act, and endanger himself and others.
Clean Harry’s loyalties, nerves, philosophies and high-tech gizmos are put to the test when his first assignment is investigating the brutal killing and violence brought upon the local vagrant/drug/thief population of Santa Cruz - by unknown, shockingly-violent vigilantes who want to clean up the town.
The violence breaks out over Labor Day weekend in a 21st Century Santa Cruz divided and cheapened by increasingly toxic drugs infecting an ever-increasing population of homeless.
One womb to tomb Santa Cruz local explains Santa Cruz in Jimmy Stewart terms: “You know the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, where George Bailey has a good life in a happy small town of Bedford Falls? Then he tries to kill himself and Clarence the Angel shows George what Bedford Falls would be like if he’d never been born? And it’s now Pottersville. Corrupted. The nice girls are on the street. The bars are ugly. Good families live in poverty. The town is ugly.
Well to someone who grew up in Santa Cruz, it’s now Pottersville. Corrupted. There’s always been homelessness and drugs here, but now it’s out of control. It’s the sheer numbers of the homeless and the toxicity of the drugs. It’s meth and fentanyl. It’s not funny or cute anymore, It’s bad.”
This attempted car thief got off with a scare. The consequences in the Santa Cruz of Breaking Point are much worse.
Meth and theft go together from Rio de Janeiro to Waikiki. A thief in Santa Cruz steals a bike, but the seat is booby-trapped and it explodes, castrating the thief and leaving him bleeding, pleading and dying in the street.
Citizens of Santa Cruz can no longer trust their outside mailboxes or have packages delivered. A thief steals a package from a porch but as he is running away to loot it, the package explodes and severs his hands - an Islamic punishment.
In September 2020 a Greek refugee camp on the island of Lesbos was torched, further displacing 13,000 already-displaced refugees:
Sign on the fence at the Ross Camp in Santa Cruz.
In Santa Cruz, homeless camps pop up in illegal areas, are tolerated for a while then closed, leaving volunteers and public servants to clean up the mess - including thousands upon thousands of spent, dirty needles. The violence in Breaking Point peaks with one of those homeless camps lit ablaze by arsonists - leaving homeless people running in flames into the river where they once bathed, relieved themselves and deposited their needles.
Over Labor Day weekend, Harry Callahan Junior and his girlfriend Alex are celebrating his making Inspector by camping/surfing in Big Sur. The first shot of Clean Harry is a tribute to Play Misty For Me: driving north across Bixby Creek Bridge in a CYBRTRCK with two surfboards in the back and a pretty girl in the passenger’s seat.
A shot from Play Misty for Me that is repeated in Breaking Point: Clean Harry and his girlfriend Alex returning to civilization after a long weekend in Big Sur - driving over the Bixby Creek Bridge.
Harry and Alex have been incommunicado for three days and are blissfully unaware of the violence until they drive into Monterey to visit with Harry Callahan Senior.
In fact, the very first words they say to each other could be:
ALEX
How is your relationship with your father?
HARRY
It’s complicated.
Harry Callahan Senior is retired and a bartender, holding court at the Sardine Factory (or Mission Ranch) with a group of older gentlemen who debate and try to understand this modern 21st Century of social media, digital currency, tattoos, political correctness, gender pronouns, defunding the police and cops getting in life-ending trouble for doing their jobs - subduing suspects who are resisting arrest.
To Dirty Harry, the modern world isn’t complicated at all: “Don’t resist arrest and you won’t get beat up or die.”
Harry Callahan Senior holding court at the bar at the Sardine Factory, or maybe Mission Ranch?
Junior and Alex visit Senior at work, and the relationship is strained - complicated. Senior congratulates Junior on making inspector, but can’t understand why Junior wants to be a cop when he could be making gazillions in Silicon Valley and dating supermodels.
Why does Junior want to be a cop? Junior asks his father the same question, a question he answered in the original Dirty Harry: “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Junior’s answer is vague: “It’s complicated.” Junior says. “I like complicated.”
Senior and Junior communicate from 20+ years on either side of Y2K across a generation gap of 50 years. There is love and respect but also distance and misunderstanding.
During this congratulatory meeting at the Sardine Factory, Senior offers Junior his infamous Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum - a cannon of a handgun weighing more than three pounds.
The most powerful handgun in the world: capable of blowing a man’s head clean off.
Senior’s gun and badge and ID are proudly displayed over the bar at Sardine Factory. Senior offers the famous .44 Magnum to Junior as a reward for making Inspector.
Junior prefers to use his brain more than bullets, and he is a cop during a time when one mistake with a taser or your knee or a gun ends your career and your freedom. He is shaky with the offer and the gun. He accepts the gun, but sketchily.
Senior and Alex get off to a shaky start. Senior thinks tattoos are vulgar and should only be displayed by bikers, hookers, convicts and Merchant Marines.
Alex is a Millennial with tattoos on her both arms, and she tries to cover up that ink when she hears Senior bad-mouth getting inked.
Clean Harry and his gal Alex. She’s from Alaska, was in the military, and is not gun shy at all. She takes Junior to the range to shoot the .44 Magnum. She loves it.
But Alex was born and raised around guns in Alaska and was also in the USMC. She takes the .44 Magnum, checks the chamber like she knows what she’s doing, hefts it, looks down the sights and says she would have felt a lot better having the hand cannon when she was charged by a momma grizzly during her senior picnic in high school. Alex somewhat cheekily explains that the tattoos cover the scars left by the bear attack that almost killed her - but also instilled emotions in her she’s still riding.
Alex likes guns and survived a bear attack, so Senior warms to her a bit - despite the tattoos and the 21st Century sensibilities.
Alex picks up on the emotions and tensions and philosophical gaps between Senior and Junior.
Alex understands better when Junior falls back on “It’s complicated.”
But Alex tells Junior that he should hug his father every chance he gets. Alex lost her parents to a bush plane crash when she was young, and it left a gigantic hole.
Clint Eastwood and Jessica Walter about to make their fateful hookup at the Sardine Factory from Play Misty for Me.
Alex tells Junior that Senior won’t be around forever and he’ll be left with a huge emotional hole he won't be able to fill - so start filling it while his dad is still around and grumpy - with kindness and closeness and hugs.
Most of the action in Breaking Point takes place between Big Sur and Ocean Beach in San Francisco. Junior is focused on solving crimes in Santa Cruz, while Senior is available, just across the bay.
The next morning, Junior drives Alex north around the Monterey Bay to Santa Cruz, where evidence of the weekend violence is everywhere: police cars, police tape, burned out areas, helicopters, media vans, crowds, bad vibes.
Junior drops Alex at her home near Steamer Lane and promises to be back soon - but the violence will bring him back to Santa Cruz faster than he knows.
Breaking Point pays tribute to Clint Eastwood’s movies by returning to locations, characters and scenarios from Play Misty for Me and all the Dirty Harry movies. On the way out of Santa Cruz, Junior stumbles into his 21st Century version of the Acorn Cafe/sugar-in the-coffee/Go Ahead, Make My Day scene from Sudden Impact (although that scene takes place in San Francisco, Sudden Impact is also set in Santa Cruz).
But this updated version of the “Make my day” scenes involves a $6 cup of non-free-trade coffee, four crazed meth heads, Junior’s CYBRTRCK and bullet-proof windows.
Junior is driving out of Santa Cruz on Mission Street and stops for a cup of coffee. He pays $6+ for a cup, inspiring an old-timer sitting at the bar to say: “Every time I pay six bucks for a cup of coffee, I wanna punch myself in the throat.”
Junior walks out of the coffee shop, takes a sip and then spits it out, saying disgustedly: “This isn’t shade grown!” or “This isn’t bird friendly!” or “This isn’t Free trade!” or some other politically correct Millennialism. (That will get some chuckles and groans)
Junior walks back into the coffee shop and there he finds four crazed meth heads waving weapons, desperate to steal a car and get out of Dodge because the town has turned on them and are trying to kill them.
Instead of shooting everyone like his dad would have, Junior asks the meth heads not to hurt anyone. He hands them the fob for his CYBRTRCK saying: “Take my truck. Get out of town. I’ll find it.”
Elon Musk’s demonstration of the shatter-proof glass on the CYBRTRCK didn’t go as planned. Or maybe it was planned this way?
But as the meth heads are driving away in the CYBRTRCK, Junior pulls out his phone, hits some keys, and takes control of the truck.
The CYBRTRCK is now going around in circles as the meth heads freak out inside. One pulls a gun and tries to blow out a window - but the windows are now indeed bulletproof.
One of the meth heads still has a meth-addled sense of humor and shrieks: “Anyone got a metal ball?!?!?!?”
The CYBRTRCK circles, the cops come, Junior uses his phone to stop the truck, the cops arrest the meth heads, Junior gets his CYBRTRCK back and thanks from the local cops - who he will be seeing again sooner than he knows.
As Junior continues driving up the coast to San Francisco, he smiles and says: “That made my day.”
It’s a potentially funny, modern scene that sets the foundation for Junior as a “tech-tective:” Junior solves a potentially deadly crisis using brains and tech, not bullets.
Loretta pours too much sugar into Inspector Callahan’s coffee at the Acorn Cafe - from Sudden Impact.
And that is one layer of Breaking Point - a tribute to classic scenes, characters and locations from Clint’s movies, but in a modern setting.
Elon Musk in front of the supposedly shatter-proof windows of the CYBRTRCK at the official unveiling.
Clean Harry drives a CYBRTRCK and loves his CYBRTRCK and uses it as a home and a tool and a weapon.
Done right - and if the politics are correct - Breaking Point could be the official unveiling of the CYBRTRCK in a major studio motion picture.
After the incident at the coffee shop, Junior retrieves his CYBRTRCK and drives north along the coast to his beach-front home at Ocean Beach - the feral western edge of a great city.
His house is tidy, ship shape and Bristol fashion from the garage up. He opens mail to find his official Inspector proclamation and puts it alongside his Stanford diploma and other awards and achievements.
Junior is a surfer who lives along the feral west end of San Francisco - at Ocean Beach. This is one of the most difficult places to surf in the world. When asked why he loves being cold and getting caught inside and surfing in shark-infested waters, Junior shrugs and says, “It’s complicated.” Ocean Beach is complicated, and maybe the most complicated surf spot in the world.
The next morning Inspector Harry Callahan Junior reports for duty as a newly-minted SFPD Inspector. To his surprise/delight/concern, he is immediately assigned to return to Santa Cruz to use his strange brain and all his gizmos to investigate the violence on the homeless, identify the vigilantes, arrest them and put a stop to it all - a shocking degree of bloodshed.
Harry Callahan Senior reluctantly partners up with Kate Moore (Tyne Daly) in The Enforcer (1976), In Breaking Point, Junior is the eager young inspector teamed up with a more experienced but burned-out and disillusioned Inspector named Lucia.
In a twist on The Enforcer - in which Dirty Harry grudgingly worked with an eager but green female recruit played by Tyne Daly, Junior is the eager but green Inspector teamed up with Lucia - an older, burned out female senior inspector who has seen enough and is counting the days until she can retire.
Together Junior and Lucia drive to Santa Cruz in Junior’s CYBRTRCK and there they are plunged into a meth-fueled territorial war between drug-addled homeless people and unknown, but shockingly violent vigilantes.
Junior brings his wit, experience, dedication, 21st Century sensibilities and a lot of high-tech tools to a small coastal town that has been transformed into a combination of Pottersville and Rio de Janeiro: beset on all sides by wealth disparity, homelessness, rampant theft and ultra-violence sparked by the toxicity of 21st Century drugs.
A homeless citizen of Santa Cruz. Does she inspire empathy or anger? Should she stay or should she go now?
Junior and his partner are immediately confronted with the philosophical and moral dilemma that confronts the citizens of coastal California - and the world: What to feel about the homeless? Pity, or contempt? How to deal with them? Help them, or disperse them and run them out of town?
Violence against the homeless has a history in Santa Cruz going back to the 1980s - but just as the homeless are more violent and aggressive in the 21st Century, so to is the violence and aggression against them.
From interviewing police officials, citizens and the homeless, Junior learns that Santa Cruz has a long history of benign tolerance with homeless and mentally ill people and drug addicts, but that tolerance has created a 21st Century situation that is no longer tolerable - or benign: Especially during the time of Covid, having large groups of homeless people camping anywhere they want in town and dropping needles wherever and befouling the river and stealing packages and bicycles and cars and anything else not bolted down - is seen and felt as a slap in the face to Santa Cruz and it has reached the breaking point.
Similar to Sudden Impact. Junior is a detective from another jurisdiction sent in to aid and abet the local police force - and the local police force feels slighted that some young, slick outsider thinks they need help doing their job. But Junior is bright and polite and likeable and he brings an arsenal of intriguing, brand-new high tech tricks and weapons to help discover who has been killing the homeless.
The local cops cooperate - grudgingly.
Junior works with the local police, all the while harboring a suspicion they are behind the violence.
If done right, the story leads viewers in the direction of rogue cops - like Magnum Force. But it’s a deception on the part of the real vigilantes, and also the movie/story.
Drone/God’s-eye view of a homeless camp in downtown Santa Cruz. If you grew up in Santa Cruz, this is neither funny nor cute.
Showing off those high tech law enforcement tricks will be one feature of this movie - kind of like how the old James Bond movies had technology that was just around the corner: Geiger counters, bionic hands and ruby-red lasers from Dr. No and Goldfinger to the Smart Blood and Nine Eyes Surveillance of Spectre. '
That is the kind of tech Junior utilizes - drones, nanobots, night vision goggles, hyper sensitive microphones and cameras, bodycams, exoskeletons, fingerprinters, DNA scanners.
Junior with his PhD from Stanford is kind of a guinea pig for this new technology and we understand why he wants to be a cop - the gadgets!!!
10 Innovative Police Technologies from UCSD:
Whatever the next level is. Whatever technology is just around the corner for law enforcement.
A statuesque surfer overlooks Steamer Lane - where Junior goes to clear his head and keep himself physically and mentally sharp.
In some ways Junior is glad to be in Santa Cruz as he can spend more time with Alex. He takes her surfing whenever he can - he introduces her to what he calls “The Reset Button:” the exertion, thrill and cold of surfing as the best stress relieve/head clearer.
And following Alex’ advice that Junior fill that coming emotional hole as much as he can, Clean Harry can visit his father on the other side of Monterey Bay - which he does as often as possible, sometimes meeting him half way in Moss Landing.
Or maybe they go to Soledad Prison together.
Making a mistake as a 21st Century police officer can have career-ending and life-changing consequences. Junior detours to Soledad in the Salinas Valley to meet with a police officer who has made a serious mistake: pulled a gun instead of a taser, applied to much force to someone resisting arrest and killed them - and ended up in prison. In their conversation he offers a serious caveat: “Don’t screw up or you’ll end up like me.”
There is an important scene where Junior detours to Soledad State Prison to visit a former police officer who made a fatal mistake - shooting a suspect whose hands were up, or mistaking his taser for his service weapon, or overdoing a choke hold - and was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sent to prison.
Junior and this fallen officer have a strained conversation on both sides of the glass, but Junior leaves with a very clear message: Don’t screw up. Don't make a mistake or in these Defund the Police times you will lose your career and your freedom and wind up in prison.
Junior runs his conversation with the imprisoned officer by Senior who scoffs and explains that is why he would never want to be a cop in the 21st Century - he who hesitates is dead. He who makes a mistake is worse than dead.
Who is killing the homeless/druggie/thief population of Santa Cruz? There are many possibilities:
The three rogue cops who were vigilantes in Magnum Force - killing pimps, drug dealers and other undesirables.
The deception practiced on Clean Harry (and the audience) is leading them to believe that it’s Santa Cruz rogue cops committing the violence on the homeless.
Concerned, fed up citizens?
Other homeless people?
Santa Cruz in the early 1970s was the Murder Capitol of the World, with Edmund Kemper, Herbert Mullin and John Linley Frasier all committing legendary atrocities at the same time - murdering families and strangers and eating some of them and doing other unspeakables: A reality even more ghastly than the fiction of Hannibal the Cannibal.
Infamous Santa Cruz mass murderer Edmund Kemper real and fiction. From Mindhunters and under arrest in Santa Cruz in the early 1970s. The homeless killer in Breaking Point could be another Santa Cruz mass murderer.
Junior learns about this history, and considers the possibility the culprit is a psychopathic mass murderer going after easy targets - and trying to make it look like others are doing the crimes: Cops, citizens, other homeless.
Scott Eastwood won’t have to fake the surfing scenes. He’s the real deal.
As the story progresses, Junior goes surfing as often as possible to clear his head. He calls the head-clearing effect of paddling hard in cold water and big waves “The Reset Button.”
Like Superman drawing his energy from the sun, surfing is where Junior gets his seemingly endless energy and clear focus.
Because of the surfing, he is befriended by a group of talented Santa Cruz surfers kind of based on The Vermin: Ratboy, Condor, Skindog. Flea, Barney, Vinny, Rodent = but a fictionalized, violent, vindictive, clever 21st Century version.
These surfers get close to Junior out of a mutual love for surfing and an interest in his work. With local knowledge they clue him into the history and zeitgeist of Santa Cruz and how dramatically Santa Cruz has changed since they were kids: “Cars disappear like cats to coyotes,” one of the local surfers says. “My truck has been stolen four times. I am as liberal and left wing as anyone, but if I ever catch someone stealing my truck or my tools every again… well I don’t know what I will do.”
The surfers who befriend Junior in Santa Cruz are based on the Westsiders, also known as The Vermin: Flea Virostko, Ratboy Collins, Barney Barron, Skindog Collins and their ringleader Vince Collier.
These surfers invite Junior to join them doing volunteer work helping the homeless leaving Junior no reason to suspect them. They are good dudes. Some of them have tattoos with the Platonic idea: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
At some point the surfers suggest that the vigilantes are fed-up cops who are tired of dealing with the mentally ill and drug-crazed vigilantes and stepping over shit and needles day after day.
On one of his visits to Monterey, Junior runs the rogue cop scenario by Senior who says it’s possible, as he nearly got killed dealing with a trio of rogue, vigilante cops who were killing pimps, drug-dealers and other street scum, way back in 1973 (Magnum Force),
The combination of the surfer’s suspicions and Senior’s near-death experience puts Junior on a Vigilante Cop angle - which pisses off the local cops no end. And also causes friction with his partner, Lucia.
Junior’s relationship with his older, soon-to-be-retired partner Lucia is similar to Keanu Reeves and Gary Busey in Point Break.
Junior’s relationship with Lucia is hazy, but she is closer to the burned-out FBI agent in Point Break played by Gary Busey - and to Senior - than the eager but green trainee played by Tyne Daley in The Enforcer - and Junior. She has seen it all and done it all in her 20+ years as a San Francisco cop, and is not comfortable at all as a cop in the 21st Century.
Maybe at some point Lucia travels with Junior to meet Senior - a legend to San Francisco police. They have a conversation about the old days, and how this new world doesn’t make sense.
It’s just gotten too damned crazy: The toxicity of the criminals, the limits put on cops and the penalties for when a cop makes a mistake in the line of duty.
Lucia is close to retiring and is looking forward to a life as a full-time wanderer, living in her van, seeing the world. Not having to deal with the shit of others.
Lucia fulfills a prophecy by the cop at Soledad and the warnings by Senior when she gets into a situation where she hesitates - and she is seriously injured or killed as the violence in Santa Cruz ramps up. A throwback to Kate Moore in The Enforcer: “Oh Harry, I messed up!”
With Lucia injured or dead, Junior’s partner is out of the picture and he finds himself running alone and angry, caught in the crossfire of a meth-fueled war between the vigilantes and the homeless who injured or killed his partner.
The Droogs from Clockwork Orange.
Clint Eastwood liked to shoot movies on those cool, clear, blue sky fall days in the San Francisco Bay Area, so Breaking Point begins on Labor Day and ends on Halloween - always a crazy night in Santa Cruz.
Junior and Alex get costumed up to go out on the town. Junior chooses to go as a familiar-looking cowboy, with a vest under a poncho and a hat and all the trimmings, accessorized with that .44 magnum.
Alex is a mermaid. Something benign and sexy and surfy.
Or maybe she’s a grizzly bear - but a sexy one.
Junior deliberately does not bring bullets for that world’s most powerful handgun. He has a service weapon in a shoulder holster hidden under his costume, but no bullets for the Smith and Wesson. It’s Halloween. Time to have fun.
Anything is possible with meth, and Junior finds himself caught in a meth-fueled battle between vigilantes and the homeless - both of them whacked out.
There is a shot of four guys dressed as the Droogs from Clockwork Orange. They are snorting huge lines of meth and then playing hogs of the road in a stolen vehicle - driving way too fast around Santa Cruz with kids out trick or treating, and looking for ultra violence.
Halloween at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk is always a lot of fun, but also a little spooky.
Junior and Alex go to a costume party on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk - riding the roller coaster and playing pinball and then ending up in the carousel where costumed guests are riding the Merry Go Round and reaching for the brass rings.
Junior and Harry are having fun when they stumble on the vigilantes committing one of their heinous acts: But they aren’t cops, they’re the local surfers. The Vermin. The Westsiders.
The local surfers who befriended and guided/misguided Junior, but a Jekyll and Hyde, methed-up version of the local surfers whose behavior illustrates just how damaging and personality-changing meth is.
These are the Droogs on drugs.
Junior catches them in an act of heinous ultra-violence: Raping a homeless woman or lighting someone on fire.
Junior is shocked and disappointed - in the surfers for fooling him and himself for being fooled. There is a confrontation with Junior that is at first philosophical: The surfers try to justify their violence against the homeless - just as the rogue cops did in Magnum Force - and try to entice Junior to join them: “Come on bro, you’re either for us or against us.”
But Clean Harry ain’t buying it and the confrontation becomes violent: Four murderous, meth-crazed surfers against Junior and his mermaid or brown bear-suited Alaskan USMC gun-loving chick.
The final scene from Sudden Impact. Showdown at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. Classic Clint.
Throughout this movie, half the audience will be cheering for the kinder, gentler, by-the-book, politically correct Harry “Clean Harry” Callahan Junior, while the other half will be fiending to see a re-emergence of the shoot first, Miranda Rights later Dirty Harry.
Junior faces that crossroads as he is in a fight to the death with the methed-up surfers.
He has the world’s most powerful handgun on his hip but no bullets, and then Alex throws him a box of .44 magnum slugs she hid in her costume.
Junior says “I love you” and Dirty Harry comes out, as Junior uses his father’s famous hand-cannon to subdue the vigilantes who had been wreaking havoc on Santa Cruz.
Clean Harry doesn’t want to shoot anyone and he doesn’t want to go to prison for making a mistake. But in the end, he is forced to draw the world’s most powerful handgun.
The End
WHO TO WRITE BREAKING POINT?
Breaking Point is a juicy idea: Controversial, commercial, topical, entertaining.
Who isn’t going to see a movie with Clint and Scott Eastwood?
A Millennial Harry Callahan! I’d buy that for a dollar!
But who to write it?
John Milius had a stroke and that’s a shame.
Paul Haggis wrote Million Dollar Baby and knows the Eastwoods and might be able to fold the real relationship between Clint and Scott into the fictional Senior/Dirty and Junior/Clean Harry Callahans.
Todd Phillips said Quentin Tarantino is encyclopedic about anything movie related and he might not be able to resist having a go at the story.
And then what about Todd Phillips? He’s at Warner Brothers!
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.