*** CONTAINS SPOILERS ***
So there's this bank, right? Evil bank. Because they finance arms deals or something. Their headquarters is a HUGE glass building in Luxembourg with a massive, totally empty lobby and when you go there they know who you are before you introduce yourself.
Maybe they don't get many visitors.
Anyway, whenever this bank needs to have someone killed - which they do quite a lot; it is, after all, an evil bank - whenever they need someone killed, they use just one assassin to do it. Always the same guy.
And the assassin they use - presumably the best assassin they could find - has a gammy leg and an orthopedic brace and a tendency to leave footprints at the scene of the hits he carries out. And the orthopedic brace he wears is manufactured by only one company and prescribed by only one doctor.
So that's quite handy for Clive Owen. Who's Clive Owen? He's an Interpol agent. Kind of a maverick. If you read his dossier, he had a breakdown a few years back when he was on the verge of bringing a case against Evil Bank but then his superiors threw it out, and ever since then he's been DRIVEN by a burning desire to see Evil Bank taken down. Because he's the last decent moral person in a world full of people who have just given up, see?
So Clive Owen and some cops have tracked the bad-legged assassin to the corner of a street in New York. No, they haven't seen him yet. They know what he looks like, because Clive Owen saw him briefly right at the beginning of the movie, but didn't realise it until he dunked his head into a sink full of ice cubes. What? Because dunking your head into a sink full of ice cubes gives you PHOTOGRAPHIC RECALL. No, it does. Have you ever tried it? Well then.
So Clive Owen and the cops have found out from the orthopedic doctor that Mr Bad-Leg always gets a taxi to this street corner in New York after his appointments. So they wait on the corner for ninety seconds, and then Mr Bad-Leg walks past, and they follow him...
What?
What do you mean, it's "a bit convenient"? It's fine!
Well then, how DO they find the assassin?
Fuck it, I'm not doing another draft. It works; they see him walk past, they follow him, it's fine.
So the assassin has been called to a meeting by one of Evil Bank's top brass, and they arrange to meet at the Guggenheim museum. Yeah, because it looks good. It's all white and spirally. There's probably some subtext there as well if you want to look for it, but the main thing is the white and the spirals. And Clive Owen and his NYPD friends follow the assassin to the Guggenheim, and they go up to the fifth floor, and watch the assassin meet with the old guy who works for Evil Bank.
And the Old Guy tells the assassin to KILL CLIVE OWEN! Because they've had enough of him investigating them now.
What?
Yes, they could have had him killed any time. Yes, years ago, when he first started annoying them. But they didn't.
Well, maybe they were hoping he'd just get bored and give up. Maybe they only kill people when those people really start to bug them too much.
Yes, they did kill a guy at the beginning who'd only just been brought in on the case, that's true. Okay, yes, that does sort of negate what I just said. Do you want to write this? No? Right, then shut up. Where were we?
Oh yeah, so we're in the Guggenheim. The Old Guy tells Mr Bad-Leg to kill Clive Owen, and then the Old Guy leaves. One of Clive Owen's buddies follows him, and Clive Owen and the other cop stay to see what Mr Bad-Leg does next. And what Mr Bad-Leg does next is, he sees them!
So they move in to arrest him, saying police stuff like "We're the police, put your hands behind your head", and Mr Bad-Leg does, and it looks like Clive Owen has caught him and will now have the proof he needs that Evil Bank is evil, when suddenly...
The Guggenheim is full of guys with UZIs who try to kill Mr Bad-Leg and Clive Owen and his cop friend! And there's a HUMUNGOUS UZI SHOOT OUT that goes on for simply AGES! And Mr Bad-Leg now teams up with Clive Owen, and they kill most of the bad guys, but then Mr Bad-Leg gets shot and Clive Owen, who's all covered in blood, carries him to the reservoir in Central Park, and then the cops show up at the museum.
No, it would take the cops that long. And no, nobody would see a bloody Clive Owen dragging a dying man into Central Park. There would not be witnesses. A crowd would not gather outside the Guggenheim if a humungous Uzi shoot out were to take place inside. Just go with it, it's fine.
What the what now?
The guys with the Uzis work for Evil Bank, obviously. Yes, Evil Bank that always uses the one same gammy-legged assassin for all its wet work. And these Uzi guys were sent to kill the assassin if it looked like he was going to get arrested and might testify.
What? WHY is it hard to believe that Evil Bank would have a private army of Uzi-armed killers waiting on standby in an art gallery in case Interpol somehow showed up at a clandestine meeting between one of the bank's officials and its contract killer?
Do any of the Uzi guys survive the shootout? Yeah, two of them. They probably get arrested when the cops show up. Who cares? No, they can't say anything about who hired them, because... Look, at this point we've changed tack, okay? What seemed to be a vaguely realistic thriller about international credit and arms deals is now an action movie, so NOTHING MATTERS ANY MORE, okay?
You know what, if you're going to be so critical then I can't even be bothered to tell you the rest of the story. No. Write it yourself if you're such a hot shot.
I told you, I am NOT doing another draft. It's fine as it is. Let's just fucking shoot it.
