In Pursuit is a Sliding Doors-esque thriller that shows two possible events resulting from a drug bust. As the movie opens, a Hero (James Dastoli) pulls a gun on a Dealer (Jake Nabel). Donny Copeland is there for no reason. Then, we see time split in half as two different pursuits commence. In the first, there is a struggle, the Dealer wrestles the gun away from the Hero, shoots at him, runs out of bullets, and chases him across the city. In the second, the Hero keeps the gun from the Dealer, shoots at him, runs out of bullets, and chases him across the city.

The biggest problem with this story is that there is no reason for the Dealer to ever chase the Hero once the gun is out of bullets. The Hero is trying to ARREST him. Why the hell would he run away? Another problem is that the parallel structure of this movie is very hard to follow, and when I first saw it, I didn't know what the fuck was happening. I think someone had to explain it to me. Then, at the end of the movie, the Dealer falls in front of a train and we go back to the Hero's eyes in the beginning. What?

As I understand it, Donny Copeland came to James and Robert with this idea after months of doing nothing when he was supposed to be writing The Black Iris, and they only agreed to do it because they wanted to have something finished in time for an international film festival. Although, history has shown that James and Robert are capable of pulling successful short ideas out of their asses, so I don't know why they relied on Donny's ass this time. Perhaps they didn't think it was such a bad idea at the time. But I think I'd be giving them more credit by presuming that they made it knowing that it would suck ass.

Here is what the Dastolis have to say about In Pursuit:

JAMES:

"We never wanted to make In Pursuit. It was all Donny's idea. Then we started to stray from Donny's idea becuase we didn't like parts of it, but that just contributed to it being incomprehensible."

ROBERT:

"I think In Pursuit was our biggest case (as of Automated Assets) of incorporating "featured extras," in which as many people as we knew or had been in previous Dastoli Digital movies got to do something while the two main characters ran past. And then of course, they got to do it again--for all of Donny Copeland's wrong reasons."

I don't think anyone was shocked when the character of the Hero ran past his own identical twin at a phone booth. For once, guys, stop using extras that are genetically identical to your main characters.