Those Who Wish Me Dead: An Entertaining but workmanlike thriller.

Rob Ryan

Those Who Wish Me Dead is the first film I've seen in a cinema after five months after the second or third covid lockdown (I've lost count by this point) made cinemas absent for film fans. That fact probably clouded my judgement of the film as a whole as I found myself feeling exhilarated and excited as soon as I was able to relive those tense few seconds of lights, out, complete silence and then the film finally starts. This feeling carried it's self through the rest of the film as I was able to enjoy myself reliving getting lost in the immersion of a tense thriller in spite of this films many obvious flaws in which any other circumstance of viewing it would probably cause me to dismiss it as a forgettable but serviceable thriller.

The film comes to us from writer/director Taylor Sheridan, writer of the excellent Sicario, and the even more excellent Hell or High Water. Those Who Wish Me Dead is nowhere near on the level of those two films. ( or even Sheridan's directorial debut Wind River) Whereas they deal in multi-layered characters and bleak narratives where the lines between good and evil are significantly blurred, Those Who Wish Me Dead is a very typical good VS evil narrative where the protagonist is easy to sympathize with and the antagonists not so, this doesn't make Those Who Wish Me Dead a bad film overall but it does make me long for the complex character studies that made Hell or High Water and Sicario so memorable.

It doesn't help that the film takes way too long to establish itself before the plot really kicks into gear, we meet our main protagonist Hannah (Angelina Jolie) a firefighter in the beautiful wilderness of Montana, who is shredded in guilt after failing to prevent a forest fire that claimed the lives of her crew and three young boys who she was forced to witness burn alive. Now she spends her days isolated in a fire lookout tower. Meanwhile an accountant Owen (Jake Webber) and his son Connor (Finn Little) are on the run from two brother assassins ( Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Holt) after learning that he is the target of a mob boss with incriminating evidence that he has in his possession (the details surrounding this don't really matter)

After 20 minutes of meandering, focusing on characters that we really don't care about instead of the more interesting grief angle that the film brushes over constantly, the two assassins force Connor and his dad of the road. Before being brutally shot to pieces, Owen gives his son a piece of paper with the evidence against the mob boss written down. Connor now forced to outrun the assassins himself meets Hannah crying alone by a river. She takes Connor back to her tower to contact help but a lightning storm has fried all electronic devices forcing them to venture into the woods, but not before they are cornered by a forest fire set up by the assasins to draw law-enforcement away from them.

If this description of the plot felt long to you, this is what the first 40-minutes felt like, while it isn't without moments of tension, those first 20-30 minutes would have been much better served focusing only on Hannah's overpowering grief-filled by her isolation in the fire tower before bumping into Owen in her patrol giving the audience a sense of mystery of what this young boy is on the run from and what does he has in his possession that is so important that even a mob boss wants him dead. Instead, we meet characters only for the audience to feel bad for once they die. The most obvious is the Sherrif Ethan (John Bernthal) and his pregnant wife Alison (Medina Senghore). Their dialogue about how they love each other makes the point obvious that bad things are coming for the two. This isn't to say that these are bad characters and both have individual scenes with the assasins that are very brutal, (one of them involving a makeshift flamethrower) but it's an element that the film would have reinforced just as well if not better if they where introduced halfway through, when the two assasins come and invade their lives.

Where the film shines is in the second half, where our heroes are forced to fend not only the assasins but the fire that is slowly making its way towards them, while this is definitely his most workmanlike in terms of direction and screenplay thus far, it doesn't change the fact that Sheridan has a great eye for action. Always limited to a few people without sugarcoating it with special effects or choppy editing, making sure that every blow from a hammer, every gunshot and every burn is felt. Even better is the cinematography from Ben Richardson who not only captures the landscape of the Montana wilderness beautifully but his bright orange filters for the fire sequences is definitely his most noteworthy work in a while. The cast is probably its selling point, Jolie's Hannah while lacking in further development is a likeable protagonist with a decent range of wisecracks, guilt, and professionalism in her field of work. Young actor Finn Little is a convincing producer of tears, avoiding the schmaltz which a lot of action films with child actors fall trap too and Aidan Gillian and Nicholas Holt are effective enough villains who are both ruthless without being too monotone or over the top. Establishing as people who are good at their job and will kill anyone who gets in their way while also displaying a passive and normal attitude to the things they do.

Ultimately I was entertained overall and I did enjoy myself while it lasted, but its flaws were too obvious to ignore and I wished certain aspects of the plot were done differently. The premise is effective to work as a thriller, I just wished it didn't take so long to get to it and when it finally hits into gear, it all feels rather brisk. Even the ending is very abrupt not giving enough closure to the characters that I would have liked, overall it's a disappointing effort from a writer as good as Sheridan but an entertaining and well made one at that. Case in point, it's Ok.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Those Who Wish Me Dead now out in theatres and HBO max in the US