Don Winslow’s The Force is like if the final season of The Shield unfolded across 496 pages. Its protagonist, NYPD detective Denny Malone, is a Vic Mackey type who leads an “elite crime fighting squad” that’s as dirty as it is efficient, and the book chronicles both his spinning moral compass and the anxious lead-up to his catastrophic reckoning, which impacts everyone from crooks and politicians to his own team. It’s very, very good, which is why we’re quite delighted to learn that Matt Damon is attached to star in a film adaptation from his Ford v Ferrari director James Mangold.
This comes via Deadline, who note that the script’s first draft came from none other than David Mamet—a big Shield fan, natch—but is currently being reworked by Mangold’s Logan collaborator Scott Frank, who also adapted Out Of Sight and (checks notes) Marley & Me. Huh.
Damon played a corrupt cop in The Departed as well, but Denny’s a different kind of beast, one that should spawn a grittier, crueler Damon than we’re used to seeing. When we’ll see it is still unclear, however, especially since Oscar nominee Mangold is also working on a Bob Dylan project starring Timothée Chalamet. Hell, we might see FX’s take on Winslow’s Power Of The Dog series before this thing resurfaces.