Matt Damon and James Mangold, having collaborated on Best Picture nominee Ford v. Ferrari, are teaming up once again. The film is The Force, a corrupt cop drama based on the novel by Don Winslow.
Damon will play Denny Malone, an NYPD detective in charge of one of the most decorated crime-fighting squads on the force. But Malone is in over his head, making dirty deals with various shady individuals, and sliding further and further away from the law. One, he’s embroiled in a corruption scandal.
But on top of that, he has allegiances with mobsters who want to collect, he must deal with New York’s racial tensions, considers ratting out his fellow corrupt cops and the corrupt mayor, and is looking over his shoulder for investigators want nothing more than to nab him. That’s a lot. It almost sounds like a quasi-sequel to The Departed where Damon played a mole in the Boston police department.
Celebrated screenwriter David Mamet wrote the first draft of the script, but Mangold is reportedly re-writing it alongside Logan co-writer Scott Frank. Mainstream cop dramas were a dime-a-dozen back in the day, so this feels like a bit of a throwback. With Damon and Mangold on board, this has every chance of being great.
Mangold is also developing a drama about Bob Dylan going electric. Timothée Chalamet will play the legendary folk singer. Damon recently wrapped filming on the Tom McCarthy drama Stillwater, and will star alongside Ben Affleck, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer in Ridley Scott‘s The Last Duel. Meanwhile Winslow, the writer of The Force, is adapting a trilogy of his novels into a series on FX.
#Peace.Love.TheForce
