Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

(On Cable TV, October 2021) I miss those large-scale thrillers we used to see more often back in the 1990s and 2000s—nominally criminal stories but ones that usually ended up as a pretext for large-scale spectacle. Something like a forest fire does nicely! Having seen Firestorm two weeks ago (and Only the Brave last year), I was primed to properly appreciate Those Who Wish Me Dead, a classic child-on-the-run-from-assassins thriller that ends up in the middle of a forest and, eventually, a forest fire. Angelina Jolie headlines the cast as a disgraced smokejumper who ends up on a fire lookout tower duty (those who played the Firewatch videogame will feel a big pang of recognition the moment the character enters the tower), ideally placed to respond when the kid of an accountant, having discovered terrible things, escapes his father’s assassins and seeks help. Written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, whose reputation as a mature thriller filmmaker is no longer in doubt after penning Sicario and Hell or High Water, as well as writing/directing Wind River, the film is a steadily engrossing suspense that’s not afraid to go big in its final set-pieces. CGI technology has evolved quite a bit since Firestorm, and the final sequence set in a burning forest is a great capper to a film that finds a good middle way between character-based thrills and action spectacle. Aidan Gillen is deliciously evil (and in-persona) as one of the relentless assassins, but it’s Medina Senghore who makes an impression as a pregnant woman who ends up mercilessly taking down her targets. Those Who Wish Me Dead is very well handled, and a welcome throwback to a kind of narrative-driven film that delivers the expected thrills.