10 Best Movie Screenplays Since 2010

Genre-Period. Writer: E. Nicholas Mariani

Purportedly soon to be a film starring Johnny Depp (not sure about the casting there), this riveting story about a small town in the U.S coming to terms with both the aftermath of WW1 and the onset of the Spanish Flu, supercharges what could have been a slow-burning period drama into an absorbing investigation into themes of loss, reconciliation, forgiveness and an America in flux, forever leaving its pastoral roots to become the technological behemoth we recognize today.

Welcome to a world where Ford Model T's jostle for parking space with reined horses, deadly Tommy guns combat vintage Colt.44s, and telegrams and locomotives intrude upon the insular gossip of the townsfolk. The story follows Frank Sullivan, a man who has lost his entire family to war and disease, who now lives as a recluse.

However, when an injured woman shows up on his doorstep, being chased by vengeful out-of-town mobsters, she begins to embody for Frank everything that he's lost in life and he swears to protect her from those who want her dead. The problem-the entire town have suffered enough, far, far too much in fact, and demand she is peaceably handed over to the mobsters.

What makes Desperate Hours such a good script is the central conflict which runs through it, which asks how does a town devastated by loss move on? Do they come together and unite over this girl and suffer more deaths or do they leave her for the wolves and protect their own? With a third Act that beautifully captures the violence that American society would suffer in subsequent years, Desperate Hours is part western, part gangster movie and part dramatic mediation on progress and change in rural America where everybody lives in fear of what the future will bring.

This is one to study for all you budding screenwriters out there. Everything which is set up is later paid off, there is drama in every singe scene, there are masses of interpersonal conflict and is infused with themes we can all relate too. By the end of the script you can't help but think this story acts as the true barometer for the rise of modern America.