Directing: B
Acting: B+
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

I had high hopes for Those Who Wish Me Dead, because of its director, Taylor Sheridan: he’s got a proven track record of films I loved, including Wind River (2017), Hell or High Water (2016) and the best of them, Sicario (2015). Of these others, Sheridan directed only Wind River, but he has sole writing credit on all three, all of them being uniquely nuanced, layered, and thoughtful dramas with singular points of view. What makes Those Who Wish Me Dead a comparative disappointment is not just that Sheridan shares writing credit with two other people—including Michael Koryta, the author upon whose book this is based—but that he’s directing someone else’s story. It just doesn’t work quite as well.

Now, “comparative” is the operative word here; Those Who Wish Me Dead is not bad. It’s maybe even a little better than the rather mixed critical consensus would suggest. I did watch this streaming on HBO Max, where it will be available until June 14, but it is also playing in theaters, and I kind of wish I had seen it there. It’s not some high-octane action movie, exactly, but it is cinematic in a way that would benefit from the big screen. Especially in the latter half of the film, in which the characters are all threatened by a huge forest fire in the wilderness of Montana.

Which brings me to casting, one area we can perhaps agree is where this film missing the mark, at least with its marquee star: Angelina Jolie. We’ve all known her for decades now, as a gorgeous movie star. I won’t say it’s patently unrealistic for a stunningly beautiful woman to be a firefighting survivalist; I’m sure they’re out there. The issue is Jolie herself, as her glamorous stardom itself is a distraction. She gives a serviceable performance in the role of Hannah, a woman still feeling guilty about the young boys she was unable to save from fire in a forest a year prior. A more unknown actor in the role could have made the part shine. Granted, a lot of times it takes casting stars that big in order to secure funding for production to begin with, so there may be a bit of catch-22 at play there.

The rest of the cast is surprisingly diverse, especially considering it’s rural Montana—one of Hannah’s firefighting buddies is a Black man, and one of the principal supporting characters is a pregnant Black woman named Allison. That woman, by the way, teaches a local survivalist school, basically runs a ranch, and the woman who plays her, Medina Senghore, fits into her role far more naturally than Angelina Jolie does hers. Even Tyler Perry pops up in a cameo, as the primary contact of the two assassins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult).

I do feel compelled to highlight the teenage co-lead, Finn Little, as 13-year-old Connor, who witnesses the murder of his father and is on the run from said assassins. It’s extremely rare that this could be said of any child actor, but Little’s performance is easily the best one in this movie. By comparison, everyone else is just going through the motions, in a movie that has very little to say.

Not that it has to have “something to say,” mind you, but it should either have that or be a fun ride, and the narrative here moves somewhere in the space between the two, seemingly unsure of a decisive thematic direction. It’s not boring, and it features just enough tension to keep it suspenseful (especially in its second half), but the script curiously leaves out pertinent details. Connor’s dad offers vague explanations for assassins coming after him for “doing the right thing,” without ever telling us precisely what that thing was. He gives Connor a written account of his “secrets” and asks him to promise to take it to the news if something happens to him. Connor gives these notes to Hannah at one point; we see her read them; we never learn their contents. And if we don’t know exactly why all this is happening, what reason do we have to care?

Furthermore, I’d have liked Those Who Wish Me Dead a lot more if the wildfire just happened naturally—it’s established immediately that it’s a regular occurrence, after all, and we even see scenes in which lightning strikes the ground in the forest and in an open field multiple times. But instead, the assassins ignite a fire just to create a distraction for local law enforcement, turning the fire into a cheap plot device. All I could think about, really, is the increased frequency of wildfires each year due to climate change, and how shit like this exacerbates it, but this movie has no interest in coming even close to addressing that. Which is, honestly, surprising for a Taylor Sheridan film, which we have come to expect to create portraits of characters facing issues unique to our time.

It almost feels like a sellout paycheck project. And maybe it is: good for him, i guess. I can only hope it helps him make a better movie again moving forward. Those Who Wish Me Dead isn’t deeply flawed, really; it’s just not up to the usual standards, and in so being, winds up being somewhat forgettable. You’ll enjoy yourself while it’s on, though.

*If you want to survive, stick with an Oscar winner!*

Overall: B