THE LAST RESORT
When Mark Bailey's pro football career was cut short by a knee injury, he bought a resort in Key West Florida, The Las Palmas. Now Mark spends his days drinking beer, checking in the 'nooner trade', taking care of the boat bums, and making time with vacationing secretaries... not as exciting as playing pro-ball, but things could be worse.
The minute Lacy Halliday checked in, Mark knew he was in trouble. She was beautiful, seductive, and accompanied by a man with a not very well concealed gun, Raoul Azul.
Two days later, Mark and Lacy are hoping the hot tempered Raoul won't find them in bed together... Lacy thinks he might kill them.
Raoul is a drug importer, using the Las Palmas as an exchange point. He has six million dollars in his room for a drug deal. Lacy convinces Mark to steal the money. Raoul can't very well go to the police, and will flee the country rather than deal with the violent drug kingpin he works for: W.A. Wright.
But when Mark goes to steal the money, he finds Raoul dead and the six million gone. And realizes that he has been set up by somebody staying at the Palmas. A dozen units, a dozen suspects... with Lacy at the top of the list.
Mark transports Raoul's corpse to Miami in a stolen boat to divert suspicion...
A wild boat chase with the Coast Guard ensues, but Mark escapes.
But W.A. Wright knows better, and demands that Mark find the six million dollars within 24 hours, or prepare for an all-out drug war at the Las Palmas. Wright has a pair of gunmen guard the boat dock and the main entrance to make sure neither Mark nor Lacy leave the motel before he gets his money back.
Mark turns detective to track down the stolen money. Searching every guest's room, questioning Lacy, tearing his motel apart. But 24 hours isn't enough time, and by sunset an army of heavily armed men descend on the Palms, setting off a running gun battle and boat chase which fill the entire last third of the script.
"LAST RESORT" is part "Body Heat", part "Blood Simple", part "Die Hard" and all suspense. A sexy film noir thriller with a slam bang action end and a dozen twists.
THE LAST RESORT screenplay by William C. Martell
For a copy of this script... E-mail me! wcmartell@ScriptSecrets.Net
To read the script online... THE LAST RESORT.
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MY BIO:
I've written 19 films that were carelessly slapped onto celluloid: 3 for HBO, 2 for Showtime, 2 for USA Net, and a whole bunch of CineMax Originals (which is what happens when an HBO movie goes really, really wrong). I've been on some film festival juries, including Raindance in London (twice - once with Mike Figgis and Saffron Burrows, once with Lennie James and Edgar Wright - back to "jury duty" in October of 2009). Roger Ebert discussed my work with Gene Siskel on his 1997 "If We Picked The Winners" Oscar show. I'm quoted a few times in Bordwell's great book "The Way Hollywood tells It". My USA Net flick HARD EVIDENCE was released on video the same day as the Julia Roberts' film Something To Talk About and out-rented it in the USA. In 2007 I had two films released on DVD on the same day and both made the top 10 rentals.
