Woman in a Black Hat
LOGLINE: Drama Thriller.
Two married strangers meet and spend the night together but later when the man dies in a terrible accident, the distressed woman has to discover what he said to her that is now causing her life to meltdown, as she is pursued by an unknown killer.
SYNOPSIS
ROBYN, is at a crossroads in her life. She decides on a night of random sex in a hotel to ease her pain. She is approached by a good looking stranger who takes her to dinner and bed.
Next morning we discover the man is JAKE, her husband, a successful Art Dealer. The exercise was and briefly proves to be, a marriage reviver.
Later, Robyn is visited by BURTON & JESSICA ,telling her that Jake is dead in a car smash. What they don’t tell her is, that implicated in the assassination of a powerful Russian Art Collector, Jake was being taken by them to a safe house. Well, you wouldn’t believe it either. So they tell her that he was to identify some stolen Russian art.
At the funeral, Gilda, a mysterious and glamorous Russian woman wearing a large black hat, briefly makes herself known to Robyn, telling her that she is a business associate of Jake’s and will soon remake contact.
Even as the coffin is lowered, two Russian heavyweights walk the streets of South London. One of the men, URIE has just arrived in London to kill Jake in turn for the murder of his uncle, the Russian playboy and Oligarch. Urie doesn’t speak a word of English so it is unlucky that his associate is accidentally killed in a bar-room brawl. In retaliation, Urie kills a local Godfather.
Robyn is devastated by her loss and throughout the film is coming to terms with her grief. Yet somehow, for reasons that she doesn’t understand the story won’t leave her alone. We understand perfectly.
So Urie sets about untangling the whereabouts of Jake while trying to master the language, avoid the local mafia and keep one step ahead of the local police.
Meanwhile in MI5 trouble is brewing as it now known that Burton ordered Jake to be ‘switched off’ as he was believed to be in a irreversible coma and his hastened death would save a lot of bureaucratic and international complication.
Urie finally tracks down Jake’s house and begins a watch. He follows Robyn wherever she goes but can’t understand why there is no sign of Jake. He only has a photo to go by. He follows her to a shop where he recognizes a man from the family who he believes responsible for the death of his uncle. He follows the man home and that night kills him in his bath. Robyn is soon contacted by the glamorous Russian woman, Gilda who needs to retrieve a couple of paintings that Jake was having - illegally - verified as genuine. Robyn breaks into Jake’s gallery - temporarily closed following Jake’s death - to retrieve the paintings.
Finally Urie is tracked to his hotel by the police but he skips out in time and checks into a small family affair elsewhere in London. Unable to wait any longer he makes the move on Robyn to find Jake. Robyn explodes in her grief not caring whether she lives or dies. Eventually she makes Urie understand that Jake is dead. As he leaves the house he is followed by Jessica back to South London where a three-way battle ensues with local hoods now involved.
But our story doesn’t end here in the back alleys of South London or at Heathrow or at MI5 or even at the hospital where Jake dies but at the hotel where Robyn and Jake had their original marriage reviver…