1972 - PURSUIT, author Michael Crichton directs his first film

 Michael Crichton the doctor turned author was primarily known for the techno thrillers.  Kind of a mix of science fiction and the espionage genres.  Crichton had a successful career as a writer.  Jurassic Park and The Andromeda Strain were very popular.  He created the long running TV series  E.R.  At some point Crichton got it in his head that he wanted to direct.  Pursuit, based on one of his early novels called Binary was a modest made for TV film that was first time behind the camera.

Pursuit has a clever plot which is about a government agent tracking a rich right wing industrialist who appears to be planning a terrorist act during the Republican convention in San Diego. Crichton or whoever his casting director was put together a good cast.  Ben Gazzzara is the government agent, E. G. Marshall casting against type is the industrialist, Martin Sheen shows up in a small part and  "Dr No" himself, Joseph Wiseman is one of those scientist types who are basically around to clear up plot points for the audience.

 

Pursuit maintains interest basically by focusing on Crichton's narrative as the government starts to piece together Marshall's plan.  For a first effort behind the camera Crichton does okay.  As a film director he was always a little on the mediocre side.  Basically he was a point and shot kind of filmmaker. He lined up the actors and got the scenes filmed.  In fact Crichton's career behind the camera is really noting special from a visual standpoint, but there was no question he was good with clever stories, witness films like Westworld, Coma, Looker and The Great Train Robbery.  Although Runaway his out of control robot film is kind of stupid. 

 

Pursuit is a good story and has good actors pulling the film across the finish line in spite of indifferent direction. 

The screenplay was by Robert Dozier, the running time was 74 minutes.  The film has the usual breaks in the narrative where advertising was inserted during the network showing.