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BACKWATER

BACKWATER
By Danny Katz

GENRE: Thriller, Crime
LOGLINE:

When a tight knit family find themselves indebted to the psychotic drug dealer taking over their backwater town, they attempt to set up a heist that will right the ship. Things get more complicated when an FBI agent with ties to the town shows up to investigate a murder.

SYNOPSIS:

Married couple Kevin and Ashlyn struggle to make ends meet while paying off her med school loans. Kevin runs a locksmith shop while he tries to get his contractor business off the ground. Ashlyn moonlights at a methadone clinic when she isn’t working at the local hospital.

Ashlyn’s brother Bobby is a gambling addict and an all-around bad decision maker. Unable to get out of his own way, he puts down the last of his money on himself to win a bare-knuckle boxing match and loses. Remy is a nurse that works with Ashlyn at the methadone clinic. As the clinic is poorly run, it’s not so difficult for her to steal pills and deliver them to the drug addicted members of a tent city, made up mostly of indigenous people like herself.

Bill is the loan sharking, drug dealing psychopath who’s been slowly taking over Bobby’s trailer park. When he catches wind that Bobby - who already owes him thousands of dollars - has wagered on himself to win fight night, he makes Bobby an offer that he can’t refuse. Figure out how to pay me back with interest, or I’ll start cutting your fingers off one by one. Believing he owes Bobby a life-debt, Kevin gets himself and Ashlyn involved in a scheme to heist the methadone clinic and pay Bill back with stolen pills.

Things get more complicated when Special Agent Moira Sharp is brought in to assist the local sheriff’s department in the investigation of a grizzly murder. She knows that she probably can’t trust the Sheriff and that the town views her as an outsider, but she’s never come across a case she won’t tackle head-on. And, oh yeah, her step-brother’s a doctor that works at the local methadone clinic. He’s a perv, and an abuser, and he’s destined for an ill-timed clash with Remy and Ashlyn.

Nate Rymer

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Maurice Vaughan

This sounds like a thrilling story, Danny Katz! I only have two suggestions:

#1) Change "tight knit" to "tight-knit."

#2) Explain what "right the ship" means. Some readers (producers, agents, etc.) might not know what it means.

Tasha Lewis

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