Screenplay: Clockers (screenplay)

Overview
Clockers follows the tense, intimate ripple effects of a single violent act inside an inner-city housing project. At its heart is Strike, a young "clocker" who sells drugs to survive, and a constellation of figures, fellow dealers, a local crime boss, family members, and detectives, whose choices and loyalties are exposed by the investigation that follows. Richard Price's screenplay pares the novel's breadth into sharp, dialogue-driven scenes that probe motivation and consequence rather than offering easy answers.
The story unfolds as a procedural and a character study at once: police work and street politics collide, and small decisions accumulate into irreversible outcomes. Rather than focusing on action, the screenplay emphasizes conversations, moral reckoning, and the economic and emotional pressures that shape lives in the projects.

Plot
A murder in the public housing complex sets the plot in motion, drawing a heavy police presence and intensifying rivalries among dealers. Detectives work to untangle conflicting accounts as suspicion spreads and pressure is put on anyone connected to the victim. The investigation forces Strike out of routine and into the glare of scrutiny, where loyalty to friends and family competes with self-preservation.
As questioning picks up pace, Strike is confronted with the possibility that silence, truth, or a false confession could change everything for himself and those close to him. The screenplay follows his attempts to navigate a world where authority is rarely trusted and betrayal takes many forms, while the police piece together disparate testimonies and motives. Tension builds not through chase scenes but through mounting ethical dilemmas and the sense that everyday survival can exact devastating costs.

Characters and Relationships
Strike is the moral and emotional center: young, alert, and weary of a life organized around quick money and coded rules. He is torn between the practical necessities of selling drugs and a yearning for something steadier; that inner conflict drives many of his choices and leaves readers with sympathy complicated by the harm those choices perpetuate. Family ties, especially to an older brother whose actions echo through the plot, add urgency and ambiguity to his decisions.
Across from Strike stand the cops, led by a veteran detective who is both dogged and human, attempting to reconcile professional duty with personal discomfort about how the investigation unfolds. The local drug hierarchy exerts its own gravity: a lieutenant-type figure who manages supply and loyalty exerts pressure that often feels as binding as legal constraint. Price renders these relationships with a plainspoken empathy that reveals how power, fear, and affection entangle people on all sides.

Themes and Tone
Clockers is a study of systemic pressures rather than individual villainy. It examines how poverty, lack of opportunity, and a predatory underground economy shape choices, making culpability messy and diffuse. The screenplay interrogates masculinity, responsibility, and community codes, showing how honor and survival can pull in opposite directions.
Stylistically, Price's dialogue is the engine: sharp, rhythmic, and full of small, revealing details that illuminate character without exposition. The tone is unsentimental yet humane, balancing procedural clarity with a novelist's attention to interior life. The result is a morally complex urban noir that leaves questions lingering, emphasizing consequence over catharsis and the human cost of everyday violence.