ReviewThose Who Wish Me Dead movie review: Angelina Jolie makes excellent return in violent drama, set in beautiful Montana
- Jolie plays an emotionally scarred firefighter with nothing to live for
- She comes across a boy being pursued by assassins, and the pair flee across the wilds of Montana
3.5/5 stars
Since penning Denis Villeneuve’s drug cartel thriller Sicario , Taylor Sheridan has established himself as Hollywood’s go-to purveyor of world weary neo-Westerns. He earned an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay of Hell or High Water , wrote and directed the Indian reservation murder mystery Wind River , and most recently adapted Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse for star Michael B. Jordan.
Those Who Wish Me Dead, which Michael Koryta adapts from his own novel for Sheridan to direct, is yet another tale of rugged heroes, resilient women and ruthless villains, whose petty dramas play out against the unforgiving backdrop of America’s implacable great outdoors.
Angelina Jolie stars as an emotionally scarred Montanan smokejumper, and joins the ranks of Emily Blunt (Sicario) and Elizabeth Olsen (Wind River) as a no-nonsense heroine tossed into a maelstrom of testosterone-soaked violence, only to see their squabbles subsumed by more elemental threats.
Reeling from a recent tragedy she was unable to prevent, Hannah (Jolie) is transferred to a remote lookout tower deep in the forests of Montana, far away from the rowdy camaraderie of her all-male team of specialist firefighters. There she crosses paths with Connor (Finn Little), a desperate teen on the run from a pair of vicious hitmen who murdered his father minutes earlier. Connor needs a guardian, while Hannah needs to atone for the young souls she failed to save.