Those Who Wish Me Dead

Taylor Sheridan's Those Who Wish Me Dead is a lean and effective thrill machine that works, just as long as you don't apply any logic to it.  It's a throwback to the kind of action movies we got in the 90s, where the grizzled but haunted hero was placed in the position of protecting someone who is innocent.  It's all about putting the heroes in one life-or-death situation after another.  Sure, it gets a bit silly after a while (lightning bolts seem to be oddly attracted to this hero for some reason), but it knows what kind of movie it's trying to be, and it's good at what it does.

The grizzled and haunted hero this time around happens to be (Gasp!) a woman.  She's Hannah (Angelina Jolie), a smoke jumper who has just as much of a thrill seeking heart as the guys on her crew, can throw back beers with the best of them, and has the same passion for using the same four-letter words in her dialogue over and over as her male cohorts do on the job.  She's a bit of a daredevil too, as we witness in an early scene where she does a stunt with a parachute.  She seems to have a bit of a death wish, and that's where the haunted part of her character comes in.  While battling a forest fire with her team once, she misjudged the way the winds were blowing, and this led to an accident that took the lives of three innocent children.  She's still haunted by their screams both in her sleep and her waking hours, and tries to quiet them with alcohol and risking her own life.

At the same time, we're introduced to little Connor (Finn Little), the young son of a Florida forensic accountant (Jake Weber) who is haunted as well, due to the fact his mom died of cancer.  His dad sees on the news that one of his clients died in a mysterious house explosion, and he immediately starts to panic, grabbing his son and hitting the road to somewhere where they will be safe.  All he will tell Connor is that he "did the right thing", and now some people want him dead for doing so.  He gives his son a letter, telling him not to open or read it until he finds someone he can trust, and to bring the letter to the news media.  All we know is that the information he has could implicate some powerful people in government, and that two men (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) are hunting him down.  In a bizarre bit of casting, Tyler Perry shows up for a one-scene cameo as the guy giving the killers the orders.

Connor and his dad head for Montana, where the dad's former brother-in-law (Jon Bernthal) and his pregnant wife (Medina Sengshore) live, and can offer them safety.  Unfortunately, the two hired killers catch up with them before they can make it there, and kill the father.  Connor manages to escape with the information that his dad was trying to deliver, and that's how he bumps into Hannah, who gets wrapped up into the situation.  Not only are the killers now after them both, but there's also a raging forest fire they have to contend with.  The secret to Those Who Wish Me Dead working is that the movie never slows down long enough for us to stop and realize how ridiculous it is.  Oh, I had my inklings, obviously, but I was enjoying myself enough that I didn't really care.

There's a certain skill required for a movie like this to work.  You need to have some impressive stunts and special effects, you need to have the heroes make a lot of death-defying escapes, and you need to make the bad guys merciless enough that we want to see the hero kick their ass in the end.  I may not have believed the plot for a second, but I did believe when both Jolie and Little were threatened by rampaging flames.  They also get some funny banter with each other when they're not running for their lives, although I question the decision to make the kid as much of a foul mouth as Jolie's character.  The violence was enough to secure this film a hard-R rating.  Still, the movie works on that primal level that we sometimes need to see good prevail, and evil be punished.  It's a simple movie, but it's good at what it does.

Taylor Sheridan (who directed and co-wrote the film) is more famous for his gritty crime dramas, like Hell or High Water, Sicario, and Wind River.  This time, he decides to simply throw the plot to the winds, and give us non-stop action.  At the very least, he proves here that he's effective at this kind of filmmaking, as well as his usual, more complex material. 

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