A Preliminary Report on Restorative Justice

The old man’s police report was a joke, but his plan to rob the mayor wasn't. Now, we're accomplices.

Introduction

This screenplay adaptation of 'A Preliminary Report on Restorative Justice' serves as a rigorous exercise in transmuting internal prose narrative into strictly observable cinematic behavior. By stripping away the protagonist's internal monologue regarding her past disgrace and desire for redemption, the script forces the audience to infer these motivations through action, silence, and subtext. This document highlights the critical intersection of digital literacy and narrative adaptation, demonstrating how complex themes of ethical compromise and rural noir can be encoded into the formatting syntax of a screenplay without relying on voiceover or exposition.

The Script

INT. MOTEL ROOM - NIGHT

The room is cheap. Wood paneling peels in the corners. A wall-unit heater WHEEZES, fighting a losing battle against the cold.

Outside, the wind HOWLS. Snow lashes against the window pane, a chaotic white blur.

CARRIE (20s, sharp eyes, tired posture) sits at a wobbly laminate table. She runs a thumb over a damp, gray photocopy.

BEN (20s, disheveled, wearing North Face gear indoors) sprawls on one of the twin beds. A half-empty bottle of Labatt 50 sits on the nightstand.

Anything?

Carrie doesn't look up. She holds the document to the light.

<center>CARRIE</center>

Police report. Cost me twenty bucks. Clerk called it a 'clerical fee.'

Snowmobile theft?

<center>CARRIE</center>

Maple syrup. Grand theft, culinary arts division.

Ben snorts. He sits up, joints POPPING.

We're here for ice sculptures, Carrie. Sparkly, frozen water. We get the B-roll, we make Albright happy, we go home.

<center>CARRIE</center>

(Reading)

"Complainant, André Dubois, alleges Mayor Tremblay stole a proprietary family recipe for Acer Saccharum reduction."

She flips the page. Her finger stops on a handwritten note in the margin.

<center>CARRIE</center>

Disposition: File closed. Vexatious reporting.

Exactly. Crazy old man. Let's drink until the roads clear.

Carrie stands. She grabs her heavy coat. The leather is stiff with cold.

<center>CARRIE</center>

He lives on the edge of town. Ten minutes.

Carrie. No. Don't do the thing. The thing that got us suspended.

<center>CARRIE</center>

It's not trouble, Ben. It's a sidebar. "The Syrup King of Sainte-Céleste."

She zips the coat. The sound is sharp in the quiet room.

<center>CARRIE</center>

If he's crazy, we leave. If he's not... maybe we stop writing puff pieces.

Ben stares at her. He sighs, grabbing his camera bag.

EXT. DUBOIS CABIN - NIGHT

A saltbox house stands defiant against the blizzard. A plume of woodsmoke is ripped away by the gale.

The door CREAKS open.

ANDRÉ DUBOIS (78, built like a tree stump, piercing blue eyes) blocks the threshold. He wears flannel over denim overalls.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

Vous êtes perdus?

<center>CARRIE</center>

Non. Carrie. Journalist. We read the report.

André looks them up and down. He spots the camera.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

Come in. You are letting the heat out.

INT. DUBOIS CABIN - CONTINUOUS

Warmth. The smell of woodsmoke and boiling sugar. The room is a clutter of books and woodworking tools.

André pours thick coffee from a percolator into ceramic mugs. He sits opposite them.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

Tremblay is a thief. He has the palate of a pig but the ambition of a king. He stole my great-grandfather's journal.

So you told the cops. They blew you off.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

I do not need a journalist to write a sad story. I need a journalist to document what happens next.

André reaches under the table. He pulls out a rolled tube of paper. He unfurls it on the table.

A blueprint. Large. Detailed.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

Mayor Tremblay's house. Second floor. Southwest corner. The safe.

Carrie leans in. The blueprint reflects in her eyes.

<center>CARRIE</center>

You're talking about burglary.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

I am talking about restorative justice.

(Eyeing the map)

What's in the safe? Besides the book.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

Cash. Kickbacks. Sixty, maybe seventy thousand. I only want the book. The rest is a... consulting fee.

Silence. The wind RATTLES the window frames.

Carrie looks at the blueprint. Then at Ben.

<center>CARRIE</center>

Hypothetically. Talk us through the plan.

INT. WORKSHOP - LATER

Sawdust and machine oil. A half-finished ICE SCULPTURE of a man with a bulbous nose sits under a tarp.

Andy marks a spot on the blueprint with a grease pencil.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

Pressure plates in the driveway. We blind them. Salt, sand, calcium chloride. Creates a conductive bridge.

Ben inspects a canvas bag filled with slushy grit.

The window sensor?

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

Magnetic contact. Old wiring.

We don't open the window. We remove the frame. Cut the wood around the sensor. Circuit stays closed.

Andy looks at Ben. A nod of respect.

<center>ANDRÉ</center>

The blizzard is our friend. But the timing is everything.

EXT. TREMBLAY MANSION - NIGHT

Whiteout conditions. The mansion looms like a fortress. Distant flashing lights of the parade color the snow blue and red.

Ben crouches by the driveway. He is a dark shape against the snow.

He dumps the canvas bag. Slush hits the asphalt.

He sprints back to the treeline.

MOMENTS LATER

A pair of HEADLIGHTS cuts the storm. A rusty Hyundai security car creeps up the drive.

Carrie watches through binoculars. Her hands tremble.

The car passes over the salted patch.

No alarm. No lights.

The car continues into the night.

Let's go.

EXT. MANSION - SIDE WALL - CONTINUOUS

Ben works a chisel into the exterior window trim. The sound of wood SPLINTERING is swallowed by the wind.

He pries. A section of the vinyl-clad frame pops loose.

He uses a small saw. Careful strokes.

A rectangular chunk of the frame comes free. The sensor remains attached to the removed wood.

A hole. Barely big enough to squeeze through.

INT. TREMBLAY STUDY - CONTINUOUS

Ben tumbles onto the plush carpet. Carrie follows, scraping through the gap.

Silence. Heavy and expensive.

Ben moves to a gaudy portrait of the Mayor. He lifts it.

A steel safe. Citadel Model 7.

You do it.

Carrie kneels. Her breath mists in the headlamp beam.

Right to 08. Click.

Left to 14. Click.

Right to 92.

She pulls the handle. THUNK. It swings open.

Inside: A leather journal. Bundles of cash.

Carrie grabs the cash. Ben takes the book.

STATIC CRACKLES.

They freeze.

A small black radio on the desk sits with a green power light glowing.

<center>DISPATCH (O.S.)</center>

(Filtered)

Post 4, do you copy? Disturbance at the mayor's residence. Front door ajar.

Carrie stares at the window. They didn't touch the front door.

<center>PELLETIER (O.S.)</center>

(Filtered, breathless)

Dispatch, I'm on scene. Send paramedics. The Mayor... he's unresponsive. There's so much blood.

Ben grips the book. His knuckles are white.

<center>DISPATCH (O.S.)</center>

Copy. All units, confirmed 10-7. Mayor Tremblay is deceased. This is a homicide investigation.

Carrie looks at the bag of money in her hand.

<center>DISPATCH (O.S.)</center>

Update on weather. Route 138 is impassable. All roads in and out of Sainte-Céleste are closed.

Ben is halfway out the window. He stops.

He looks back at Carrie.

Outside, the white wall of the blizzard seals them in.

What We Can Learn

This adaptation highlights the challenge of translating internal motivation into external action. In the source text, Carrie's decision to join the heist is driven by a complex internal monologue about redemption, her professor, and her past disgrace. In the screenplay, these thoughts must be stripped away, relying instead on the visual shorthand of the 'cheap motel' setting and the subtextual friction in her dialogue with Ben to convey her desperation. The audience understands her choice not because she explains it, but because the visual contrast between the bleak motel and the warm, purposeful atmosphere of Andy's cabin physically manifests the allure of the 'story' over her current reality.

From a technical perspective, the script utilizes pacing and sound design to build tension, replacing the narrator's descriptive anxiety with observable sensory details. The 'WHEEZING' heater, the 'HOWL' of the wind, and the 'STATIC' of the radio are not merely atmospheric; they are narrative beats that dictate the rhythm of the scene. The formatting adheres to the 'invisible camera' technique, using paragraph breaks to isolate specific details—like the blueprint or the safe dial—forcing the reader's eye to focus on these objects without the use of amateur camera directions like 'CLOSE UP' or 'INSERT'.

The adaptation also underscores the genre requirements of a rural noir thriller. The text must balance the mundane (maple syrup, rusty Hyundais) with high stakes (burglary, murder). By grounding the heist mechanics in specific, observable physical actions—the chemical reaction of the salt slush, the surgical removal of the window frame—the script establishes a grounded reality that makes the sudden pivot to a homicide investigation feel abrupt and trapping. The final radio transmission serves as a 'lock-in' device, physically and narratively sealing the characters in the location, a classic structural technique to force confrontation in the next act.