Perhaps a perfect popcorn flick for moviegoers who can close off their brains and enjoy a decent action story with some pretty good cinematography that also stars one of the most marketable movie actors of the last 25 years, Those Who Wish Me Dead is a movie that fails to capitalize on its potential. Outside of Maleficent, Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted, A Mighty Heart) hasn’t had the best decade in front of the camera. However, her fanbase is still tremendous. Her opportunity to return to the action-adventure drama helped solidify her career (Salt, Wanted, Lara Croft Tomb Raider, Mr. and Mrs. Smith). She may have done enough to secure future starring roles with her physically impressive performance as a Montana smokejumper named Hannah. She was the highlight of Taylor Sheridan’s (Sicario, Wind River) movie that otherwise failed to deliver.

I don’t often review movies I don’t like very much unless they are Oscar contenders or films that do well with critics and audiences but that I don’t necessarily agree with. Those Who Wish Me Dead is certainly not an Oscar contender. However, it has received scores that I don’t feel warranted. 63% for critics and 86% on Rotten Tomatoes completely befuddles me. I don’t see how three out of five critics and 17 out of 20 non-critics think this movie is good. Its 6.1 rating on IMDB is a bit more realistic but still a little high, though I agree that the entertainment value is certainly there, and that might be enough. It would likely earn more of a pass if I watched this movie before starting my movie review blog. I would have been caught up in the action and the movie’s overall pacing. With a run-time of 91 minutes, there’s hardly a second to breathe. This was something that I enjoyed about the film.

We learn in the film’s first scene that Jack (Aidan Gillen – HBO’s Game of Thrones, HBO’s The Wire) and Patrick (Nicholas Hoult – Mad Max: Fury Road, The Favourite), a pair of ruthless assassins who blow up the district attorney’s home involved in a high-profile case. We don’t know the story of why. The news claims it was a gas leak, but as the audience, we know better. Forensic accountant Owen (Jake Weber – Thank You For Your Service, U-571) also knows better. After seeing the news, he and his 12-year-old son Connor (Finn Little) immediately packed and exited their Florida home. It seems as if Owen and the DA share the same information that got the DA killed. Owen fears what he knows will get him killed, too.

The father and son make their way for a surprise visit to the vast wilderness in Montana, where his brother-in-law Ethan (Jon Bernthal – Ford v Ferrari, Widows) is a local police officer. He hopes to hide there until he figures out a better plan. Ethan and his pregnant wife Allison (Medina Senghore – Netflix’s Happy!) live a quiet life in a cabin, away from the noise. Ethan leisurely spends his days keeping his friendly town in order. This includes keeping ex-girlfriend Hannah and her wild smokejumper friends from doing anything too crazy.

It would be good to have a general understanding of what a smokejumper is going into this movie. This was the first I had heard of this profession. Getting the chance to research the career of a smokejumper was worth the movie watch alone. This was one of the videos I watched. I recommend it.

***Start of Spoilers***.

Many things weren’t needed, and many others needed to make more sense.

It was hard to get past Hannah’s unevenness. It has nothing to do with Jolie. She did a fine job with the cheesy script that Sheridan gave her. I don’t know why it was so important to know that she previously made an error in judging the winds of a smoke jump that resulted in the death of three children, resulting in PTSD. Does saving Connor provide her with a chance at redemption? Isn’t it one of her jobs to save the people she may encounter while fighting wildfires? Why does she need to be haunted by a past decision at all? Mental illness is nothing to joke about and is highly prevalent in today’s society, but Sheridan didn’t do its depiction justice. Sure, we’d see flashbacks of the children burning in the forest, but why? It didn’t advance or hinder Hannah’s character at all. She was a smokejumper. That was all we needed to know. We didn’t need to know this backstory to have a rooting interest for her.

I didn’t understand Hannah’s teammates’ point if they wouldn’t be a big part of the film. Introduce us maybe to know that she is part of a team, but then distance her from them. There was no need to know that some of them were jerks, as we saw from the scene at the bar when two of them asked a beautiful woman why she was with the man she was with, directly in front of the man. It did nothing other than possibly giving firefighters the stigma that they were invincible and walked on water (or fire, in this case). If it was Sheridan’s goal to show that people can be less than perfect with their behavior when off the job, but when they are on call, these firefighters are the utmost professionals, he failed miserably.

Connor, a 13-year-old kid, watched his father get assassinated in front of his eyes by assault rifles used on a car that he was a passenger in, yet he could figure out the Montana terrain on his own as fires blaze in the not-too-far-off distance. He has his wits to form a quick friendship with Hannah, offer a smile, and converse pleasantly. Hours after his father is gunned down in front of him? Even though those same men are hunting him down with assault rifles?

Jack and Patrick bother to take their suit jackets and ties off while running for miles in a smoke-filled forest carrying heavy machinery. Who are we fooling here? I can feel my shins splint at the thought of running while wearing loafers.

Of course, we had the moment when Allison went to kill Jack just for her gun to have run out of ammo. Of course, we had the moment when Allison gave all of the information she knew to the two assassins just to have a can of aerosol spray next to a burning firepit, allowing her to create a flamethrower. Or the “Hey, are you looking for me?” question posed by Conner to Patrick, just in time to stop the fatal blow to Allison’s skull (as an aside, was the physical violence of a man repeatedly striking blows to a defenseless woman needed when the man had both a gun and a knife?).

Also, we are expected to believe that this story takes place over about 24 hours. Oh, except it takes about 40 hours of driving nonstop to get from Florida to Montana. It would be hard to keep that frenetic surge of energy that Owen has with, likely, multiple sleepovers at roadside motels.

Those were just a few examples. All in all, the absurdity was over the top.

***End of Spoilers***

The good? You won’t be bored, which says a lot about some of the movies released recently. Even the action movies lately have bored me some. Marvel movies, The Fast and the Furious, the Mission Impossible, etc., are great movies. Still, they end up following the same cookie-cutter recipe that you can’t help but lose interest in as you know what will happen. At least with a movie, such as Those Who Wish Me Dead, it takes us to unchartered territories. Jolie was great as a protagonist, for we could cheer. Any movie is made better with an appearance by Bernthal, especially when he gets to play a good guy. The visuals were also great. I’m trying to remember the last time I saw a movie that took place with a wildfire running rampant in the background.

Overall, Those Who Wish Me Dead is an entertaining but absurd movie. I understand that escapism is something that we go to the movies for. However, sometimes a director will go for the absurd, or at least over the top when telling their story. This movie is indeed an escape, but it seems like it’s also trying to be serious. Sheridan has been a machine over the last five years, cranking out four terrific movies (Sicario, Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Hell or High Water, Wind River) as a screenwriter. He also wrote the 2021 film Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse screenplay, but that film has gone quietly into the night. Those Who Wish Me Dead still has the same grit and execution we expect from a Sheridan-directed film.

Plot 5/10
Character Development 5/10
Character Chemistry 5/10
Acting 6/10 (like so many other movies, the kid did this movie no favors)
Screenplay 5/10
Directing 6/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 8/10
Universal Relevance 5/10
61%

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• Mad Max: Fury Road
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