Writers: Brian Skiba, Andrew Stevens, Dawn Bursteen and Ben Fiore
Director: Brian Skiba
The body count is high in Brian Skiba’s confusing but watchable shoot-‘em-up. It would be even higher if it weren’t for the jammed guns and the bulletproof vests. Running like a video game where the bosses never die, Pursuit looks good even though its story is ultimately unfathomable, not surprising looking at the number of writer credits.
Computer hacker, Rick is looking for his wife. She’s been kidnapped by violent criminals who demand bitcoins as a ransom. The gang sends him videos on the dark net of her bound and gagged. When she isn’t returned, Rick decides to take matters into his own hands.
Pretty boy NYPD cop Mike Breslin is grieving the death of his fiancé who was thrown off a roof by another group of violent criminals. He refuses compassionate leave to continue his undercover work busting serious drug rings. On one such mission he only just manages to dodge the bullets shot by Rick who’s there searching for his missing wife.
Soon, everyone is after Rick. Not just the police, but Rick’s father led by patriarch Jack Calloway (John Cusack) and gay sadist John, supposedly a friend of the Calloway family. Cusack’s character thinks that Rick is giving the names of drug dealers to the police and so promises other criminals that he will find his son to put a stop to the grassing. Rick has also been sending John’s father pictures of John making out with his boyfriend. John wants revenge.
Although set in New York, and then in Arkansas, everyone – and that is everyone – looks like they come from L.A. and the sun shines like it does in California. Breslin looks too much like a film star to be a New York cop, something, thankfully, that the rest of the cast comment on in some way. As the grieving cop, Jake Manley isn’t required to be too upset even when his partner takes a bullet in the chest.
There’s more nuanced work from Graham Patrick Martin as John. He’s flighty and scared, but this makes him more of a threat, more of a loose cannon in a film where everyone is on edge. Putting on a butcher’s apron before some serious torture is a lovely antidote for his boyish looks. Give this character his own film series.
The Walking Dead’s Elizabeth Faith Ludlow is Zoe, a Little Rock cop who befriends Breslin in his search for Rick, and ultimately the men who killed his fiancé. Zoe’s inexperience of big city crime is charming and Ludlow gives the latter half of the film some moral weight. Otherwise, it’s just bad guys shooting other bad guys. Looking like a young Meatloaf, albeit with face tattoos, Emile Hirsch is an unlikeable hero on his quest for truth. In the first half of the film, he spends much of the time trawling the net looking at news articles that are in desperate need of copy editor.
And that just leaves John Cusack, whose heady days of The Drifters and High Fidelity are long behind him. His filmography is now a list of direct-to-video movies, but there’s nothing wrong with his acting in Pursuit. It’s just that he is given very little to do. He grills steaks on the barbeque for most of it, but despite this symbolism, there is surprisingly little gore in the rest of the film. It’s all bullets and guns and bullets and guns.
Pursuit certainly won’t lead many to reassess the career of Cusack, but the bright colours of Skiba’s palette and the occasional stylish action sequence make this a diverting 90 minutes. As long as you don’t have to explain the plot afterwards.
Pursuit will be available on Digital Download from 12th June.
