This film script is currently lost somewhere in the south of Ireland. But hopefully I will find it someday
THICK AS THIEVES
Story and Screenplay © By David Collins and Roger Cottrell
LOGLINE
Crime thriller set in New York. A former British paratrooper seeks revenge for the murder of his friend. He infiltrates the Irish mob to catch the killer, but finds himself embroiled with the Turkish Mafia and a mysterious artefact linked to Milton’s Paradise Lost.
SYNOPSIS
Twenty years ago, the life of British paratrooper Graham Merrick was saved at Goose Green, in the Falkland Islands, by a fellow soldier named Harris. When Irish gangsters murder Harris in New York Merrick turns up looking for revenge.
Posing as a hit man, he wins the trust of ageing Irish gangster Doyle, an IRA veteran, in order to flush out Harris’s killer – who is in fact Doyle’s nephew Clancy. Merrick agrees to carry out a hit against a rival Turkish gang in Brooklyn and to recover a mysterious artefact that the Ariff brothers (Ibrahim and Mehmet) have recently smuggled into the US. The purpose and nature of the artefact is not known… but Middle Eastern legend links it to the renegade angels who fell to earth following Satan’s insurrection in heaven.
Merrick takes the job in order to play for time and find Harris’s killer. He executes the younger Ariff brother (Mehmet) but leaves a calling card implicating Doyle’s organisation. He recovers the artefact but ends up unwittingly rescuing a Kurdish girl named Amal from the Ariff brothers’ clutches. After Clancy tries to kill Merrick in a double cross (and Amal saves his life) they abscond together to the country where they become lovers – and plan their revenge.
The stakes are raised for Merrick however, when Amal is abducted by Clancy in order to get the artefact back. By now, Ibrahim Ariff is also looking for his brother’s killer. Merrick offers Doyle a deal – the artefact for Amal - so long as Doyle offers up Clancy in return. Merrick knows that Clancy murdered his friend and is determined to dish out justice. Doyle agrees… but sells out Merrick to Ibrahim, who wants Merrick to pay for the death of his brother. All are drawn into a hail of gunfire and mayhem at the climax, where only one man will be left standing and both Amal - and the mysterious artefact – form the prize.