![]() Along comes Connor (Finn Little) whose father is being hunted down by a team of hired assassins (Aidan Gillen, Nicholas Hoult). She's been reassigned to a lonely lookout tower to deal with her guilt and PTSD. ![]() She is still recovering from a recent tragedy where she was unable to save campers from a fire. We follow Hannah (Jolie) and her team of Montana forest fire fighters. There's so much amazing potential here with these plot elements, this cast, and this rising filmmaker, and to only produce a square, straightforward 90s action throwback feels deeply unsatisfactory. Then if I said that it was co-written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, one of the best screenwriters working today who excels at taking muscular genres of old and providing uncommon depth and poetry, then you might say, "Why aren't we watching this right now?" Those Who Wish Me Dead, based on the book by Michael Koryta, is Sheridan's second directing effort after 2017's excellent Wind River, and while I would not classify it as a bad movie, it is easily Sheridan's weakest film to date. If I told you I had a movie where Angelina Jolie is on the run from a team of assassins and under the backdrop of a raging forest fire, you'd likely be intrigued. Now available to see in some theatres, streaming on HBO Max, and on-demand, I think Those Who Wish Me Dead could find a small audience who loves it. Still, everything surrounding these poor elements more than made up for them. It pretty much becomes a film about good guys and bad guys in a very generic way and I felt that significantly hurt the film. ![]() Overall, Those Who Wish Me Dead has a lot of great elements in terms of performances, tenseness, and overall visual style, but the film sort of sputters out, to be honest. It was well done, but the storytelling was too obvious at times. It was very obvious from the beginning what her arc would be throughout the film. ![]() I enjoy when a film places you in the present with a character and has you learn about their past as the film progresses, but I felt like Those Who Wish Me Dead jumped into Hannah's past far too quickly. This leads me to the overall structure of the film. Their motivations were lacklustre at best. There were scenes where it felt like they were being villainous for the sake of villainy and it didn't work for me. While they're both great actors, I found their storyline to be all over the place. Sadly, the film feels bogged down the most with the characters Jack (Aidan Gillen) and Patrick (Nicholas Hoult). Their back and forth dialogue brought a smile to my face and their dramatic moments worked just as well. His comradery with Jolie is what truly sold the movie for me. Some of the dialogue here felt generic at times too, so the fact that it had such a great cast definitely elevated the material.Īngelina Jolie delivers a very solid performance here, but the standout to me was young Finn Little as Connor. There were almost too many subplots here for the short runtime that it has, but it all worked in the end. Both now hiding from a looming threat and a forest fire on the horizon, it very quickly becomes a dramatic survival movie. Alone in the wilderness and just trying to find peace, she stumbles across a young boy who has just witnessed a murder. The film picks up with Hannah (Angelina Jolie), a hotshot survivalist who is struggling to cope with losses in her past. It has issues, but here's why I believe this film deserves some attention. ![]() While it may not have all the nuance that his previous outing did, his touch is still very much alive here. For that, I was very excited to see Those Who Wish Me Dead. Wind River was the first film that he both wrote and directed and it ended up being one of my favourite films of 2017. Regardless of the subject matter, I've become a sucker for any project that Taylor Sheridan (writer/director) is involved in. ![]()
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