THE MESSAGE

THE MESSAGE Written by Ben Ellis Genre: War Film – World War II – Escape & Holocaust. Length: 90 page feature screenplay. Logline: After his family is killed in The Blitz, a British soldier accepts a suicide mission to infiltrate the Nazi atomic bomb program only to discover The Holocaust, now he must escape Germany and tell the world. SYNOPSIS: It's 1942, EDDIE MUNRO, a captain in the newly developed British special forces, has just saved a unit of men from the advancing Nazi's in North Africa only to hear the devastating news that his wife and young son have been killed in The Blitz. Eddie returns to England to bury his family. His life spirals downwards culminating at the wake, sitting on the toilet with a gun in his mouth but Eddie is saved by a note slid under the door. British Intelligence want to meet with him. They want him for one last mission behind enemy lines in Southern Germany to confirm whether a munitions base has been repurposed to construct an atomic bomb. It's a suicide mission. Eddie agrees, he has nothing else to live for. Eddie parachutes behind enemy lines, discovering the munitions base is actually a concentration camp. With no radio contact, Eddie is to communicate via flares, and is given two 'windows' 12 hours apart to rendezvous with an RAF aircraft. A prisoner shows Eddie an escape route, pleading with him to make it out alive so he can tell the world - now Eddie has to live. A vindictive Einsatzgruppen Nazi officer, OBERSTURMFUHRER SAUER, pursues Eddie through the Bavarian countryside with a couple of soldiers. At the first 'window', Eddie is surrounded so cannot fire a flare as it'll give his position away, so stays quiet as the spitfire roars past overhead. Eddie escapes by killing one of the soldiers and reaches an empty train where he meets another young camp escapee, LEVI HIRSCH. Eddie commandeers a radio operator's motorbike and puts distance between himself and Sauer. Eddie tries to contact allied forces with the radio before the last 'window'. Eddie and Levi find shelter at an abandoned farmhouse and make contact with British forces. Whilst discussing a plan, Eddie realises it's actually a Nazi intercept, Sauer has tricked him. Eddie moves quickly to get Levi out, send up the flares and hold Sauer up long enough so Levi can make it to the Swiss border. With Levi gone, Eddie sits on the motorbike inside a barn awaiting Sauer's arrival and the spitfire flypast. Sauer arrives, Eddie wheel-spins out the barn but instead of heading towards Sauer he stabs a knife into the petrol tank and rides out across a field, criss-crossing it. In the distance the merlin engines can be heard, Eddie stops by the gate, lets his bike fall, holding his flare gun by his side. Sauer aims a Luger at him, drop it! Eddie fires the flare into the ground, the petrol is set alight, the spitfire screams overhead, the flames spread out following the trail of petrol, Sauer shoots Eddie dead before running to the gate for an elevated view of the field; the flames are now in the shape of the Star of David. The spitfire arcs back, the pilot informs HQ of the symbol. Levi escapes to Switzerland. Sauer, recognising the Allies are winning and that the camps will result in severe recriminations for all Nazi officers, escapes to Switzerland too. 20 years later, Levi is now a Mossad agent. He knocks on the door of a picturesque cottage in the English countryside. Sauer, an old man, answers. Levi holds his gun to Sauer's forehead, cocks the trigger, and fires an empty chamber. Sauer is arrested, and Levi drives off in Eddie's old sports-car. /end