Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

4/10

 

Starring

Angelina Jolie

Finn Little

Nicholas Hoult

Aiden Gillen

 

Directed by Taylor Sheridan

 

I guess I expected way too much from this film, so I partly blame myself for the letdown. This '90s-styled action film fails in the aspect of giving us a compelling story that will keep you engrossed. Instead, it trades a needed compelling story for a thrilling all-night action sequence that drags on way too much. The film is based on a book of the same name by Michael Koryta, who also worked on the screenplay. The movie has a lengthy, somewhat slow beginning that introduces you to everyone involved in the first thirty minutes. If you skip from there to the last twenty minutes of the film, you can still piece it all together easily.

I recall back in the '90s when all you needed for an action film was a seemingly bad guy sending his goons to take down a family where someone has evidence against him. One member of the family escapes, and with the help of a stranger who somehow stops all the bad guys, they survive. That plot summarizes the whole movie, except for a few changes here and there.

In this one, we have Hannah (Angelina Jolie), a smoke jumper suffering from nightmares where she lost some of her coworkers in a fire. On the other side of things, a family is murdered by two assassins. The murder was to kill the father and stop him from releasing evidence he has on a series of bad dealings between top government officials and a mob boss. The forensic accountant who actually dug up this evidence saw the incident on TV and knew it was not an accident (as the murders were covered up as a gas leak explosion). He went on the run with his son. You know how these movies go—time is of no relevance. This man and his son were on the run from the moment he saw the murders on TV. The assassins first searched for them in their home, taking their time to piece together their possible destination. Then, they got ahead of the running pair to lay a trap.

The man died but not before handing over the incriminating evidence to his son, asking him to get it to a TV station. While running, the son runs into Hannah, and together, the two are hunted by the assassins.

This weak screenplay from the past has been worked on and shaped better in films of today. This film, on the other hand, decided not to bother to work with the standard of today but stick with a '90s setup.

Acting-wise, based on the seasoned actors all lined up in this film, I have to say they delivered. Other than that, there’s hardly any reason to recommend this film to anyone. I was hoping that having Jolie in the cast would make this movie a compelling one that I could recommend to my friends, but I was disappointed.

You can catch this movie in cinemas or on HBO Max, but honestly, I’d say go see something else. The problem is, there are very few things to see nowadays.