Jolie makes a comeback
NOT HER BEST OFFERING BUT SHE SEEMS TO ENJOY IT Thriller about boy, 12, pursued by assassins who have just killed his father.
After a screen absence of some years, Angelina Jolie makes her presence felt in this neo-Western survival action thriller set in the midst of a raging forest fire.
The fires have become a hot topic (excuse the pun) with Australia, California and Table Mountain in the news and the filmmakers have capitalised on the subject by fashioning a tense production.
Based on the book by Michael Koryta, who also receives a screenplay credit, Taylor Sheridan’s hard-driving action yarn concerns a 12-year-old boy, Connor Casserly, played with matured assurance by young Finn Little.
His father, a forensic auditor, is killed by two assassins who, it seems, represent a covert operations group. It appears he is in possession of damning information, a key aspect that is not made very clear here.
Connor finds himself, frightened and alone, in a vast forest, while the two killers (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) are moving in fast for the kill.
Enter Jolie. She is a free-spirited firefighter Hannah Faber with a chequered background, who happens to be on the scene at the moment Connor is running through the forest.
The feisty woman is in hot water for ill discipline. She has been tasked by the Sheriff’s department with the tedious job of watching out for fires, living alone in a wooden tower above the forest.
The two characters are now on the run from two deadly assassins while a raging fire is slowly engulfing everyone. Some scenario ...
Those Who Wish Me Dead is certainly not Jolie’s best screen offering, but she seems to enjoy the action sequences and has some tough things to do.
Young Finn Little, is a cute-looking child star, with an endearing presence, and he works well off Jolie’s Hannah entity.
A side bar to the narrative is Deputy Sheriff Harrison (Jon Bernthal), who consigned Hannah to the tower and whose wife is expecting their first child.
He gets roped into the unfolding drama with deadly consequences.
Director Taylor Sheridan orchestrates the whole escapade with some style and drive, with plenty of striking aerial photography of fires consuming everything in their path.
But my concern involves the murky mechanics of the plot where there could have been more clarification on motivation for the killings.