Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

Those Who Wish Me Dead is the sort of film that really shows how much a director makes or breaks a movie. This story of a fire fighter saving a boy from assassins could have been a stylishly engaging pulp adventure filled with fascinating characters with rich backstories. But Dead, with its awkward and generic title, ends up being a rather standard action film with paint by numbers characters that all blend into the background. To be clear the film is completely fine and isn't boring. But there are so many points at which I could have imagined it to be just so much more interesting. 

Nicholas Hoult and Aiden Gillen play run of the mill assassins with nothing interesting about them. Imagine them in the hands of Quintin Tarantino. We would have quirky villains with a whole history behind them bringing them to this moment. Here they are just people who show up and try to kill people. Jolie plays a damaged hero whose tragic history is a plot device and never really explored but eventually abandoned as it no longer serves its purpose. Imagine her in the hands of someone like Greta Gerwig. Her journey to this hero moment would have an emotional punch that would make this adventure all the more powerful. The film is shot scene to scene like a TV show just telling us the story. Imagine this in the hands of a Christopher Nolan. It would be visually spectacular with visual ties to the emotions of each moment. What we have is just a generic forgettable story. 

Let me be clear. Those Who Wish Me Dead is perfectly fine. The film does the bare minimum to get us through its story and we get to feel that evil is vanquished and all is right with the world at the end. But when you turn it off it's over. No emotional resonance lingering. No wasn't-that-moment-cool remembrances. No after film discussions about the meaning of the film. It's just 100 minutes to distract you from life. That's fine. I just usually prefer something more. 

Those Who Wish Me Dead

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Hoult, Aiden Gillen, Jon Bernthal, Medina Senghore, Jake Webber, Tyler Perry, Finn Little

Director: Taylor Sheridan

Writers: Michael Koryta, Charles Leavitt, Taylor Sheridan