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The Raw Relief of Those Who Wish Me Dead


Even after seeing it, I’m not entirely sure what the impetus for the plot of Those Who Wish Me Dead actually is. As far as I can gather the super important information being carried by Owen (Jake Weber) and thereafter his son Connor (Finn Little) across some six states is evidence of a major money laundering operation by a mob boss played by Tyler Perry of all people. There’s not much specificity to what it really is and just how damning, only that they need to make it public (and adamantly not through the police) before they are dispatched by a pair of hitmen. But this vagueness isn’t a weakness for Taylor Sheridan’s new film, as its’ much more about the sheer brutality of this manhunt against the brutality of nature than the details of its plot.
Taylor Sheridan is an interesting filmmaker. Having written the acclaimed screenplays for Sicario and Hell or High Water, directed Wind River, and created the series Yellowstone, he  has carved a niche for himself as about the only American filmmaker effectively working in the neo-Western genre, and particularly in that mould of No Country for Old Men. His movies are known for their moral (or amoral) rawness, their bleak circumstances, intense environments, and (especially in the case of Wind River), a frontier social conscientiousness. I think there’s an important space for movies like that, especially now, and it’s one of the reasons Those Who Wish Me Dead gelled with me, despite not being as good as Sheridans’ other films.
It’s Sheridan’s first script that isn’t original, adapted from a novel by Michael Koryta, who co-wrote the screenplay with Sheridan and Charles Leavitt. And it’s not a badly written one, though it is a bit shallow in certain regards. It concerns three story threads that eventually converge in the dense forests of Park County, Montana -the most significant being the kid on the run from assassins. He’s bound for a safe haven with his fathers’ in-law Ethan (Jon Bernthal), a police officer in the region, but instead finds himself in the custody of Ethan’s ex Hannah (Angelina Jolie), a smokejumper recovering from the trauma of failing to save some children in a forest fire the year before. It’s paced very well with stringent momentum, yet every so often makes room for moments to breathe, coming in at just over an hour and half. Aspects of the characterization can be a touch thin, for Ethan and especially for Hannah initially. But Jolie’s screen power overcomes that without much difficulty.
And it is nice to see Angelina Jolie in a movie again that’s not a crappy Maleficent product for Disney. She is such a titan of a cultural figure that it might be forgotten she has appeared only sparsely in front of the camera this last decade (specifically this is only her fifth live-action performance in ten years). She’s good too, her movie star charisma being a particular asset for this devil-may-care figure emotionally isolated (physically too given she’s monitoring a lookout tower) from virtually everyone. Bernthal, a favourite actor of Sheridans’, is also pretty good for what might otherwise be a dull and thankless role, partnered with impressive newcomer Medina Senghore as his pregnant wife. Her performance is especially affecting in a scene where she’s terrorized by the films’ villains -played with exceptional vileness by Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult. Sheridan demonstrated in Wind River a knack for concocting the kind of monstrous people an audience loves to hate, and while this pair don’t hit quite so close to home for being less authentic, they are no less despicable. The cold, psychopathic brothers who won’t flinch at blowing up a house with a family inside or machine gunning a car off the road make for a surprisingly terrifying menace as they methodically predict the moves of the protagonists and impersonate figures of authority and calm. And yet there’s a morbid humour to them as well, particularly Gillen, who approaches the job with a disturbing workman-like attitude, even after sustaining a bad injury.
These two contribute considerably to the films’ potent intensity, perhaps its’ major strength, as Sheridan consistently raises the stakes in new emphatic ways. There are some truly harrowing moments of imminent danger here, as the movie threatens to go very dark -and such scenes are shot with vivid precision. The only bigger threat than the ruthless killers hunting a child is a spreading forest fire in the last act. And I don’t know that I’ve seen a forest fire portrayed so fiercely in a film since Bambi -it really drives home how overwhelming and scary such a powerful force of nature it is for those of us who’ve never had to experience one firsthand.
All of this is not to say that Those Who Wish Me Dead is a particularly great movie. Themes such as Hannah’s trauma or Owen’s aversion to law enforcement are never interrogated. There aren’t really any deeper ideas to the film, as much as some of the filmmaking would infer such (a couple solemn, meditative digressions for instance) -it’s pretty basic, and not original or groundbreaking in any meaningful way. Some of the performances are good but nothing extraordinary, and the setting, for its’ many conscious references and open wildness, hasn’t the character of Sheridans’ other films -it really is mostly a backdrop. The film happens to deliver just enough as a tense and gritty thriller. And that is perfectly okay -I had a good time with it. Movies like Those Who Wish Me Dead aren’t a common thing anymore, good ones even less so; and so it was something refreshing to see coming back to theatres in 2021.

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