It is great to be fully vaxxed and back at the movie theater, but it is even better to be pleasantly surprised by a movie I had written off before getting there.
Those Who Wish Me Dead is a very clunky title, but since it is based on a book, we will blame the book for that – after all, Firestorm was taken. Here, Hannah is a smokejumper firefighter who has been relegated to spending the summer in fire country in a very lonely tower watching for lightning storms and fires in the distance. She is suffering some major PTSD after running point on a forest fire the previous year and being unable to save three kids. While she tries to recover, her ex, who also happens to be a local cop, is trying to keep wild fire fighters and locals in line and cuddling up with his very pregnant but also a survivalist wife. Unbeknownst to any of them, his brother and son are currently on the run from some bad folks, because he is an accountant working with the DA’s office in Florida, and responsible for the evidence to put away a big time criminal. The accountant grabs his son and takes off on the run to his brother and sister in law.
Big time villain Tyler Perry (did the character have a name? It doesn’t matter – it’s Tyler Perry) sends some devious but exceptionally capable hitmen after the accountant who swiftly figure out where he is going. They beat him out there but miss the kid, who has the evidence, or at least that is what we are to assume, since his father gave him a note and told him only to give it to someone he can trust. To distract everyone, the hitmen set a forest fire and the movie becomes a chase between Hannah, the kid, the cop, his wife the survivalist, the hitmen, and the fire.
The fires that sweep across the mountains of the southwest every year are getting more and more frequent, terrifying, and deadly. This movie uses that fear as a backdrop for an interesting surface-level story. We never really find out what the bad guy did, what the accountant did, or even what information he gives to the kid. While that seems like it could be missing, it is not critical to the story, which is more about the action of the chase and Hannah’s redemption as a character. Directed by Taylor Sheridan, it certainly has a few weak moments, but I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging it was.
Angelina Jolie is just the right balance of crazy and grief as Hannah. The trauma of being unable to save three kids when your entire job is saving people is fairly well depicted as she tries to pull herself together, mostly unsuccessfully. Since she has been mostly directing the last couple of years, it was fun to see her in this mostly throwaway action flick before the Eternals later this year.
Jon Bernthal (who will always be Shane even though he is the best Punisher we have had) is great as Ethan, the cop who is noticeably concerned about his ex and her inability to process while still focusing on his wife and their coming baby plus the worry of his brother on the run and coming to see him. Medina Senghore plays his wife, Allison, and she got some of the best action sequences in the movie – although I am a little skeptical that a woman 7 months pregnant would ride a horse into a forest fire. But, as is mentioned multiple times, she is a survivalist who runs a survivalist camp.
Finn Little plays Connor, the kid, and he is quite good – very believable, with a simple and straightforward performance. I can not help but wonder what was on the paper he managed to eventually get to the press, but I am also willing to accept that is not key to this story.
The two hitmen are played by Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult. Gillen’s American accent is improving and I appreciated how he seemed tired and frustrated through most of the movie but determined to get the job done. He also seems terrified of his boss, Tyler Perry – but again, we do not get to learn why or what exactly they do.
I spent most of the movie trying to figure out if Nicholas Hoult was really Nicholas Hoult because this was not a role I expected to see him in, but again, certainly threatening, capable, and chilling as a hitman who for a moment or two seems to have some qualms about their methods in chasing Jake Weber’s accountant, but in the end is going to carry out Tyler Perry’s commands. What is Tyler Perry up to?
Overall, the movie was a surprise for me, and with a tight runtime of just under two hours (most movies should be under two hours) it is a fun way to pass an afternoon in the theater – or at home, since it is also streaming on HBOMax.
6 out of 10 – Would knowing more about what type of evil Tyler Perry is up to gotten more points? We will never know!
No comments:
Post a Comment