Taylor Sheridan’s Those Who Wish Me Dead proffers a more indirect depiction of frontier violence than his earlier takes on the neo-western, 2016’s Hell or High Water and 2017’s Wind River. The film revolves around Hannah (Angelina Jolie), a specialized first-response firefighter who parachutes in to tackle wildfires in Montana. She’s haunted by her failure to save the lives of three children, who she witnessed burn to death when she and her fellow “smokejumpers” were unable to keep one particularly nasty blaze under control. A shot at absolution comes when she encounters Connor (Finn Little), a young boy on the run from a pair of hitmen (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) who murdered his father, not long after they also took out the local district attorney as part of a mob plot.
Aside from its breathtaking setting and its central characters’ uniquely dangerous profession, which has Hannah looking out for fires in the wilderness from a monolithic watchtower above the trees, there’s little that’s remarkable or novel about Those Who Wish Me Dead. And while the archetypal pairing of a traumatized, guilt-wracked veteran and a child in need of rescue could still make for an engaging story, the film doesn’t really have the personality to elevate such a trite setup. The whole business of wildland firefighting itself comes across as nothing more than an exciting new coat of paint on a rusty premise, with very little exploration of the smokejumpers’ daily activities beyond their faintly unconvincing blue-collar camaraderie.
As the filmmakers go to great lengths to establish Hannah’s demons, Those Who Wish Me Dead is hampered by sluggish pacing, and the fact that it takes so long to bring her and Connor together leaves very little space for their relationship to develop. There’s also a strange lack of detail in the hitman subplot, which can sometimes give it a satisfyingly hard-boiled genre edge, but it mostly just feels underdeveloped and creates a strange dissonance with some of the film’s more deliberately emotional moments. It’s hard to shake the feeling that Sheridan never quite decided what kind of film he wanted Those Who Wish Me Dead to be, as it teeters between a kinetic action thriller and something a little more low-key.
The story resonates mostly due to a charismatic performance from Jolie, who wrings a decent amount of emotion out some awkward, overly declarative dialogue. And though there’s a general lack of tension to much of the film’s escalating violence, a climactic standoff and escape against the backdrop of a raging forest fire is briefly thrilling, and could have been genuinely cathartic if our investment in the characters’ feelings and conflicts had been deepened. It’s typical of Those Who Wish Me Dead, a genre film that regularly gives hints of something more dynamic and distinctive but ultimately fails to leave much of an impression.
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