Taylor Sheridan had a decent career as an actor, including recurring roles in both “Veronica Mars” and “Sons of Anarchy.” Then in 2015 he switched to behind the camera, writing the excellent and intricate thriller Sicario. He followed that up with the modern western outlaw flick Hell or High Water, then both wrote and directed Wind River with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen. Wind River was more contemplative than the propulsive action of the previous two films. Sheridan had written the movie about a murder on a Wyoming reservation, only to discover when they started filming that it mirrored actual unsolved cases. He incorporated details of those crimes into the film. Sheridan also created the series “Yellowstone” and wrote most of its episodes. The sequel to Sicario, Day of the Soldado, was a misfire, and his recent participation in Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse made me no longer consider his name on a production to be a positive, but I did want to see how he would do both co-writing and directing another outdoor crime thriller, Those Who Wish Me Dead. What is on the screen has its moments, but it’s not much more than an extended TV episode.
In a return to action flicks eleven years after the decent Salt and the abysmal The Tourist, Angelina Jolie plays Hannah, an experienced smokejumper who’s now grounded, working for the Forest Service in a fire lookout tower in Montana. She’s haunted by a fire her crew tackled that went very bad, leading to several deaths. Reunited with several of her firefighting team, she tries recreating a stunt she’d done before – parachuting off the back of a speeding truck – but it doesn’t go well and only raises the ire of Ethan (Jon Bernthal), a deputy sheriff married to Allison (Medina Senghore), who runs a wilderness survival training camp.
In Florida, Jack (Aiden Gillen) and Patrick (Nicholas Hoult), a two-man hit team, take out a prosecutor and then sets their sights on Owen (Jake Weber), an accountant who’s the main witness against crime boss Arthur (Tyler Perry). Owen learns of the prosecutor’s death and goes on the run with his son, Connor (Finn Little), heading to Montana and Ethan, whom Owen trusts as they are related. The killers, though, discover where the father and son are headed and race ahead of them, setting a trap. While Jack and Patrick get Owen, Connor escapes into the woods, where he’s found by Hannah. She must use all her skills to evade the killers.
The camera still loves Jolie, and she can still handle an action scene convincingly. However, she’s not served by the weak script. The movie’s based on a novel by Michael Koryta, who collaborated on the script with Sheridan and Charles Leavitt (Blood Diamond, In The Heart of the Sea) At a run time of 1:40, including the credits, not much thought is given to developing the characters beyond stereotypes. Tyler Perry is completely wasted as Arthur, with one short scene that might as well have been a phone conversation with its lack of tension. Owen’s predicament is only developed in the briefest way, and how the killers decide where he’s headed strains credulity. With Jolie’s Hannah, it feels like we’re being fed more filler than meat.
An exception is Medina Senghore’s Allison, who is believable at the pregnant survival expert who becomes the worst nightmare for Jack and Patrick. Bernthal, though, is essentially neutered by the script. He’s still interesting to watch, but you long for him to have more to do, especially if you’ve seen his work in The Accountant, Baby Driver, Ford vs. Ferrari, or “The Punisher” series on Netflix. Hoult is a bland generic bad guy as Patrick, though Aiden Gillen is a bit more interesting. Still, in comparison to his Game of Thrones role, Littlefinger, Aiden’s Jack is a marshmallow.
The story and the poster promise a forest fire sequence, which creates the climax of the film. What you get is okay, but nowhere near the intensity or full realization that was done in Only The Brave. If Those Who Wish Me Dead were made 60 years ago, it would have been the B film of a double feature – something for the audience to enjoy, but not the main draw. With this cast though, you expect much more, and Those Who Wish Me Dead doesn’t deliver it.
omnivorous cinephile 