Thriller scrubs up surprisingly well
Review
Those Who Wish Me Dead (R16, 100 mins) Directed by Taylor Sheridan Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★★1⁄2
In a laughable flail at professionalism, I just now read a brief interview with this movie’s co-writer and director Taylor Sheridan.
In it, he says, after all his years of acting in other writer’s films, he prefers his scripts to have ‘‘absurdly simple’’ plots and storylines, so they can unfold with an absolute minimum of expository dialogue.
Hence, maybe, the success of Sicario – which Sheridan wrote – following one woman agent in a world of posturing men, going up against a drug cartel with all guns and instincts blazing.
I loved Sicario from first frame to last. But I still needed a second pass at it, before I really got my head around which monosyllabic sociopath was doing exactly what to whom, and why.
While Those Who Wish Me Dead doesn’t quite nail that quality of gnomic, blood-drenched inscrutability, it does at least walk the walk of a pleasingly minimalist thriller, talking not much more than is strictly necessary.
This story is the old one about the kid who is hiding from the baddies who have murdered his parents, stumbling across the solitary but heroic loner who will save him, kill the villains, put the world to rights and thereby atone for some flashbacked sins of the past.
We’ve all been watching this same threadbare load of old nonsense unspool in theatres for decades now. And, done well, we’ll always be up for another tilt at it.
Angelina Jolie is the damaged hero-alone here, living in exile at a fire-spotting tower somewhere in the Montana wilderness, wrestling
You know that gunfire, forest fires and mayhem will ensue, that not everyone on the poster will still be drawing breath as the credits roll and that the good guys will eventually prevail.
with the memory of having caused the deaths of her buddies, back when she was the leader of a crew of smoke-jumpers.
Elsewhere, a pair of ruthless assassins are murdering anyone who could testify against their boss in an upcoming trial, including the hapless dad of young Connor (Finn Little), now running for his life through the tinder-dry forest and straight into the orbit of Jolie’s Hannah Faber.
Those Who Wish Me Dead unfolds as it must.
Yet, for Jolie’s commitment to the lead and the excellence of the support cast – Aidan Gillen and Nicolas Hoult are believably human as the villains, Medina Senghore (Happy) hopefully scores a breakout as the heavily pregnant partner of the small-town cop who becomes Gillen and Hoult’s captive – this still scrubs up as a fine way to waste a couple of hours of a Saturday night.
Listen, you know that gunfire, forest fires and mayhem will ensue, that not everyone on the poster will still be drawing breath as the credits roll and that the good guys will eventually prevail. This is the way of these things.
All we need to know is whether Those Who Wish Me Dead isa better-than-average thrash at that familiar plot. And I reckon it is.
The characters are well sketched in, with Jolie only a part of a strong ensemble. The action sequences are very adequately assembled. And the entire enterprise gets across the screen like it has somewhere to be and knows how to get there. On a cold winter’s night, surely that’ll more than do.