Those Who Wish Me Dead

Director Sheridan and his co-writers Charles Leavitt and Michael Koryta (whose novel is the source material) have fashioned a thoroughly engrossing tale filled with memorable characters, dryly funny dialogue and show-stopping, often brutal confrontations in which the weapon of choice varies from semi-automatic firearms to a deer rifle to a fire extinguisher to handguns to an axe to bare fists, depending on the circumstances.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is solid meat-and-potatoes fun – it knows its job, gets it done with minimal fuss and leaves its audiences full and satisfied.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is missing an act, maybe, some of kind bridge between its drawn-out beginning and its hurried climax. What’s in the film is staged shrewdly by Sheridan, but there’s little sense of cumulative build.

This isn’t Sheridan at his best and, although it may provide Jolie with some exposure outside of voice work and Disney properties, it’s not going to resurrect her career as an action star or a serious actress.

As a taut thriller, it works, but the “why” of it all, the substance that generally makes even Sheridan’s worst efforts still fascinating, is strangely and glaringly absent.

While there’s plenty of large entertaining set pieces, Sheridan’s intriguing premise withers under its overabundant components.

In Those Who Wish Me Dead, Jolie demonstrates her career-long fascination with action derring-do and physical punishment, to diminishing effect. In this pulpy, borderline laughable genre picture, not even her hair is believable.

I loved this movie! My family and I didn't get up once. Which is a big deal for my bunch. We enjoyed it very much. Highly recommend.

Those Who Wish Me Dead is a fun film with lots of action, great visuals, and powerful performances, particularly from Angelina Jolie and Jon Bernthal. The pacing isn't always perfect as the story moves very quickly at times, but feels rushed at others. This movie also ran into a problem that many modern blockbusters face in that it felt like the characters were incapable of injury despite being in almost certainly fatal incidents. Even with these flaws, this is still a decent movie that is worth giving a view, even if it's for no other reason than having a chance to look at Montana landscapes.

This is an okay movie. Mostly, it is a showcase for Angelina Jolie, who plays a hotdog firefighter who seems to be intent on being one of the guys and keeping up with their antics. She is sent to man a fire tower where she will stay alone - without a bathroom - for a couple of months. In a separate story, a forensic accountant is on the run from bad men because he knows too much. He takes his young son with him. The characters’ lives intersect and Jolie must help keep everyone safe in the wilderness from the bad men and a raging fire. Not a bad story, but some pretty relentless violence bothered me.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]