Pursued

2004
5.2| 1h35m| R| en| More Info
Released: 21 December 2004 Released
Producted By: Andrew Stevens Entertainment
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

A fast rising hi-tech executive must protect his career and family from the ruthless tactics of a homicidal corporate headhunter.

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Reviews

Pluskylang Great Film overall
GazerRise Fantastic!
MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant
Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Enchorde Recap: Ben Keats is the director of small but upcoming company Viztrax (or something like it) that is about to hit it big. His success has not gone unnoticed and soon he gets a call from the executive head hunter Vincent Palmer. Palmer is brutally (literally) ruthless and won't take no for an answer. Palmer's methods are obsessive. Keats first thinks he can just turn him away but Palmer then begins to stalk him and his family. And Keats start to think that Palmer's methods are not so innocent. At the same time he got to handle his family that is starting to crack under the pressure.Comments: A thriller that quickly ran out of promise and got tiresome. The character Palmer is meant to be very obsessive and oppressive, yes, but this felt like over the top. I generally like Slater but this time he mishandled his role, or got the wrong directions from the director. And really, the set up doesn't hold. A homicidal head hunter? Really? But the worst fault was a classic one. One that many second rate thrillers have fallen into before, but this one seemed a need to explore once more. The one were the supposed victim thinks he can do it all himself so much that he is over and far beyond the line of stupidity. He don't communicate with his wife. Not at all. Some of that can be explained as they recently has hit a rough patch. But when Ben get pretty sure that Vincent is seriously dangerous, and threatens his family and Vincent still doesn't have any real hold on him yet, why don't he go to the police? Or at least the security consultant that his company already has hired? Instead he plays along, inevitably getting caught in Vincent's net.The cast is actually rather good, Gillows, Slater are joined by Warren and Clarke Duncan. But they never seem to get something going. And that sums up the entire movie. It never got going. There are many thrillers out there that are a lot better. Watch them instead.3/10
triple8 SPOILERS THROUGH:Christian Slater stars in this movie as Vincent Palmer a corporate recruiter, who has one major problem, that being that he is insane. Gil Bellows plays the hapless guy who Palmer targets as the perfect person to fill a job for his client. The only slight problem Is that this guy has no interest in changing jobs. But that's not a problem for Mr. Palmer. He'll just force the guy to take the job by stalking him, threatening violence and generally making his every moment a nightmare.This movie sounded like it had potential. Not as being a good movie but as being one of those "so bad it's good" movies, the kind one loves to hate, knows is bad, but for some inexplicable reason watches(more then once) and is pretty entertained by anyway. That however was not to be with Pursued. It wasn't "so bad it's good" it was just bad period.Stalker movies have been done and done again and it seems like every kind of situation has been covered but I must say I've not seen this done before so it did sound, at the very least interesting. Only it isn't. Within the movie's first few minutes, the viewer knows Slater's character is insane. The rest of the movie is spent waiting for someone in the movie to realize it. Bellows character kind of gets it but his passivity is really annoying as is the character of the wife who almost defies belief with HER reaction to the won't take no for an answer head hunter. And Slater's performance isn't as campy as I'd have imagined it would be. In fact the whole cast plays it pretty serious and the visual element to the movie is almost non existent. It's very mundane in that department.The technical aspects of the movie are not very interesting and the speech about the corporate executives becoming targets? Good speech but it sure didn't fit in this movie. (for some reason there was a brief moment where I felt a sense of deja vu, like I was watching the movie "Disclsure", a much better movie that has almost nothing in common with this one, but I could see a speech like this in a movie like that more then here.) So, because everyone seems to be taking the movie so seriously there's no camp. There are also no twists and turns. There are also no surprises. There is no character development. (ok-movies like this rarely have character development. But still....) Also It is just not that interesting. Almost everybody is annoying anyway and the few that aren't, are not given enough screen time. Plus many of the performers just mail in their performances anyway, though a few are actually pretty good. It's not unwatchable and isn't as bad as some of the other, more well known movies of this type, but on the whole this was still pretty Disappointing.
thegreatearthmother Christian Slater does an adorable good guy but there's nothing better than Christian Slater doing a lunatic. He did a very good job of that in this movie. I thought the movie was well written and had a very good storyline. A good case for someone who needs psychiatric medication taking a less stressful job. lol. A very clever bad guy is outmaneuvered by the good guy. I supposed that was the only fly in the ointment here. It would be nice to see the bad guy win for once. Especially in this case where the bad guy worked so hard for it. lol. Lots of action in this movie, which of course, Christian Slater does so well. I'll probably end up watching it at least one more time, maybe two.
pierotti I am going to disagree with every other person who seems to have commented on this film. The worst thing about it is Christian Slater, who plays what I like to think of as a "Garden Variety Hollywood Psycho". Think Bettlejuice with a better complexion in an Armani suit or Hannibal Lecter on a diet of espresso rather than Fava beans. Slater's character Vincent chews the scenery shamelessly and seems to have the omniscient information that these psychos always seem to have. I do agree that Gil Bellows is largely an empty cipher in the center of the movie, he's basically playing the same troubled weak guy he played in Ally McBeal. The only time he comes to life is when he's attacking Slater's character.As Bellow's wife Estella Warren does her usual decent job, playing a woman confused by her husband's behavior, although the smart woman she seems to be would have seen through Vincent in about 5 minutes. She also needs to work on that anxious look she perfected in Planet of the Apes and uses as her predominant expression throughout most of this film. Still this movie does establish one thing. If Angelina Jolie has the finest lower lip in Hollywood, Estella warren definitely has the mosy sensuous upper lip. There is one scene where Warren comforts her PlanetOTA co-star Michael Clark Duncan, who plays, of all things, a venture capitalist.Unfortunately all this scene did for me was to think what a great General Thade (another classic Hollywood Psycho) Christian Slater could have been.The continuity in this film seems odd. Key scenes of exposition, especially between the husband and wife, are missing. The wife appears to change her opinions about her husband and what is going on without ever having a scene where she realizes that Vincent is dangerous and her husband isn't crazy. There are also scenes of high tension with no payoffs. I especially would have liked a scene that wraps up how the situation with Vincent was resolved and whether the crooked cop got taken down. All we get is Vincent dies and Billy, er Benji's company becomes a success with no explanation how or why. I suspect that the filmmakers were trying to make the standard 90 minute film and cut out too much in their effort to meet this demand.To conclude, if you like Hollywood Psychos and their near invincibility you will probably enjoy this film. If on the other hand you are bothered by bad editing and odd inexplicable motivations on the part of major characters you should probably save your money. On the other hand this is still a better movie than Stra Wars I or the Fantastic 4.