Those Who Wish Me Dead sees Angelina Jolie return to the action genre as a fire-fighter trying to protect a child who witnessed a murder
I need to come clean from the start of this. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Angelina Jolie, despite…well, despite everything.
Despite some terrible movies for a start. Lara Croft, The Tourist, Maleficent, which was probably her biggest hit but was pretty dire.
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In Jolie’s defence, apart from her early Oscar-winner Girl Interrupted, I can only really offer glorified B-movies like Salt, Mr and Mrs Smith and a surprisingly touching turn in the Kung Fu Panda films.
And somewhere in between there’s a no-nonsense thriller called Those Who Wish Me Dead.
Jolie’s always at her best playing someone a bit damaged who needs to redeem herself. Here she plays Hannah, a smoke-jumper. That’s a firefighter who’s dropped to the edge of a forest fire – I believe it really is a thing.
Last year Hannah misread the conditions and three trampers died. Her best buddy Ethan tries to cheer her up, but we all know it’s going to take more than a friendly “snap out of it”.
It’s going to take another kid in trouble – a blood-stained young chap called Connor who arrives at her lonely lookout tower.
What Hannah doesn’t know – though we do – is that Connor’s Dad was on the run, pursued by two sinister and dangerous assassins.
The car crashed, Connor escaped with some valuable something or other - don’t worry about it - and is looking for help. Hannah, are you that help? Will you step up to save the kid?
While we try and guess the answer to this mystery, writer-director Taylor Sheridan decides we should at least get an inkling why these people are chasing Connor.
They’re a mixed bunch of bad guys – Game of Thrones veteran Aiden Gillen, nice guy Nicholas Hoult in a rare villainous role, and, briefly, as the Big Bad, American family favourite Tyler Perry.
It’s bad enough that these ratbags are pursuing Connor through the woods with Hannah, who’s armed only with a small hatchet. And let’s face it, we have seen this old Witness plot before, dozens of times.
So, let’s make Those Who Wish Me Dead a bit more interesting. Let’s set the woods on fire.
The Florida forest is tinder dry, and once it goes up, there’s no way through it. So, there’s the bad guys behind them, a raging forest fire in front of them, and only one damaged firefighter to protect the kid.
On the plus side, that firefighter is Angelina Jolie of course.
All right, it seems pretty predictable when you put it like that. Once the clockwork story-line has been wound up, all you have to do is let it go, you’d think.
But writer/director Sheridan – despite the evidence currently before us – is no idiot. He wrote Sicario and Hell or High Water, which were pretty good, albeit directed by other people.
Sheridan and his special effects people can certainly put an impressive forest fire up on the screen, and some of the stunts are genuinely gobsmacking.
If Those Who Wish Me Dead peters out a little before the end, well, that’s standard for many thrillers. And unlike several movies I’ve seen recently, I was in no danger of nodding off halfway through. Any film that can say that gets an extra star and half immediately.
