Not only is there no there there to this story, there’s really not much of a here there, either. A combustible game of cat and mouse ensues, a massive fire nipping at everyone’s heels all the while.Įverything that happens in “Those Who Wish Me Dead” is just tinder for the inferno that’s building in the background, and nobody bothers to pretend otherwise. Lucky for Hannah, she’ll get a shot at redemption when the accountant’s young son Connor (effective newcomer Finn Little) survives the ambush the bad guys set for his father and escapes into the trees with all of his dad’s most valuable secrets. Her name is Hannah Faber, and she’s been a wee bit self-destructive since failing to save a few teen boys from a recent blaze. The logic that knots these plots together is inane in a way that almost beggars description, but suffice it to say that a forensic accountant realizes that he’s next on the killers’ hit list and - without irony - hightails it to the survival school near the wooded mountains where Jolie’s character works. The rest of the film is just gravy after that. This is cinematic muscle memory at its finest it’s your body remembering scenes from “Commando” and “Cliffhanger” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight” that your brain long forgot. As they casually walk down the street a few minutes later, a splotch of fresh blood on their clothes, the shot is framed so that you just know the house is going to explode in the background. In a seemingly unrelated scene, two ominous types played by Aidan Gillen (of course) and Nicholas Hoult (why not!) pose as harmless electric inspectors in order to talk their way into a Florida district attorney’s home. ‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ Review: The Entire Sandler Family Serves Up a Sweet Coming-of-Age Comedy But in a story that could go in any number of directions from such an auspicious beginning, it’s what happens next that cements Sheridan’s film as the vintage stuff of braindead weekend viewing par excellence. That may not be high praise, but it sure as hell isn’t a complaint either.Īdapted from Michael Koryta’s 2014 novel of the same name, “Those Who Wish Me Dead” starts the way that every movie should: With “Salt” mode Angelina Jolie smoke-jumping into the cauldron of a Montana wildfire. In 2021, it can’t help but feel like an unintended anachronism as if Sheridan aimed for something that matched the gravitas he wrote into “Sicario” or the dark portent he blew into “ Wind River,” fell very far short, and landed in a pillowy bed of old popcorn instead. A simple but smoldering throwback to the days when all you needed to make a decent action film was a big star, a striking location, and a few cold henchman carrying those fancy machine guns with the red laser sights, Taylor Sheridan’s “ Those Who Wish Me Dead” is nothing short of the most rock-solid blockbuster of the 1994 summer movie season.
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