Release Date:  March 12, 2004
Rating:  PG-13 (for violence/terror, sexual content and language)
Genre:  Drama/Thriller/Horror
Run Time: 1 hr. 46 min.
Director:  David Koepp
Actors:  Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello, Timothy Hutton, Charles Dutton

Johnny Depp is back once again, this time offering a glimpse into the mysterious world of writers, who seem to spend all of their time drinking, sleeping or facing a blank screen. When they’re not doing that, they’re losing their minds. Or so it seems.

Mort Rainey (Johnny Depp) is having a mighty bad time of things. A successful author, Mort is now suffering from a prolonged case of writer’s block created by painful memories of his wife in bed with another man. Amy (Maria Bello) lives in their beautiful house with her new boyfriend, while Mort is stuck in the couple’s remote lake cabin, trying to get back his life while avoiding the divorce papers that Amy keeps sending.

One afternoon, a black-hatted stranger named Shooter (John Turturro) shows up at Mort’s front door, claiming that Mort plagiarized a story he has written. The two stories are almost identical, and Mort is a little ethically challenged.  He once stole a story and had to pay off the author to keep quiet. But this time, the story is his – even if Mort happened to be under the influence of old Jack (Daniels) at the time he wrote it. …

Shooter gives Mort three days to produce the original Ellery Queen Magazine, where Mort swears his story was published years before Shooter wrote his. To drive home his point, Shooter then kills Mort’s dog. He also burns down a house, which impedes Mort from getting his hands on the magazine.