A Taylor Sheridan original.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is a film I honestly haven’t thought about ever and I figured out why; I don’t think anyone was really talking about it when it came out in 2021. The movie grossed a whole $21 million worldwide in the box office. And I guess it makes sense, it was right when the theaters opened back up. I was too busy watching Spiral in theaters that week. Those Who Wish Me Dead is based on a 2014 novel of the same name and was directed by David Sheridan who you may know as the creator of Yellowstone and its prequels.

The film has a pretty strong cast. Angelina Jolie plays Hannah, a smokejumper who finds herself grounded in a lookout tower after a tragedy during a firefight the year prior. Hannah’s motivation in this film is that she screwed up and now wants her moment to save a life to make up for the ones she failed to save before. And what luck, because young Connor played by Finn Little is just the kid whose life she needs to save. And maybe even save herself in the process.

Connor and his dad Owen (Jake Weber) are on the run from assassins because Owen was an accountant who knows bad things that happened. The kind of bad things that get a district attorney assassinated in his own house. Tracking them are a couple of assassins who go by Jack and Patrick. Jack is played by Aiden Gillen who you may recognize as CIA guy from The Dark Knight Rises or Paul Serene from Quantum Break. Nicholas Hoult meanwhile most recently played Renfield in the titular film Renfield.

Jon Bernthal is here as Ethan, Owen’s brother-in-law and husband to the very pregnant Allison (Medina Senghore). Sometimes a film comes around where you think, how did they get that cast together and still end up fading into obscurity? Did I mention Tyler Perry is in this movie? He’s easy to miss given he’s not running around like a jackass in women’s clothing.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is a really well shot film with great sequences, including an electrical storm and a big forest fire. It also has a lot of shootouts. I don’t think I need to confirm that Angelina Jolie is still a really talented actress, and incidentally the kid does a good job playing his role. Jon Bernthal is still typecast as a cop, but the stars of the show are really Jack and Patrick. The two guys play off each other really well, and I’m pretty sure at least some of their lines were improvised. You can see their buddy nature as they react to the other’s hairbrained schemes like they are actually hearing it for the first time.

Everyone gets the absolute crap beaten out of them over the course of the movie and it’s not afraid to ugly up its actors. It’s also not afraid to burn down the set. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t compliment the acting chops on Medina Senghore as Allison, who becomes the badass while very pregnant woman with a gun and a vengeance streak. She’s a theater actor, which explains a lot. The film was scored by Brian Tyler, which explains why I’ve been thinking about Bubba Ho-Tep a lot these past few weeks.

I guess the big detractor in the movie is that there are way too many plotlines going simultaneously, leaving the movie feeling stretched thin. It’s a little over an hour and a half and could have used another half hour of screen time or killing one or two plotlines. Also it doesn’t make nearly enough use of Hannah’s skills as a smokejumper and kinda writes that out of the equation early on in the film. Hannah’s survival skills seem to involve pouring hydrogen peroxide on a cut and wrapping it in bandages.

But still, this was a gripping and emotional movie for those who want to feel the feels between people shooting each other with guns and a kid saying the fuck word.

Rating: B+