![]() That’s a fair tradeoff for the few moments where Sheridan gives in to the rugged poetry he relies on to manufacture an artificial sense of importance. ![]() The action is clear and rooted in human stakes, even during a climactic standoff that’s almost completely obfuscated by smoke. His camera drinks up the big skies and flax-colored fields before they both get swallowed by the flames, and he seems comfortable with nature doing most of the heavy lifting here. For the most part, however, the director is right at home in this “Yellowstone” terrain. These poor unfortunate souls have the bad luck of being in the killers’ paths every step of the way, which leads to some heart-in-your-throat action scenes that only a fetus in the belly can buy the rather unknown Senghore is a major find, and watching her turn the tables on Gillen and Hoult is the kind of unfussy spectacle that can bring a multiplex audience to its feet.Īll of the setpieces burn with that same degree of no-nonsense nonsense, even when some dodgy CGI elements threaten to peel away the reality of Sheridan’s natural vision. In that light, it’s all the more impressive that Jolie is still excellent as an unmoored badass who’s in desperate need of someone to save - someone to lure her down from the fire tower where she’s holed up for the season - and she does a lot of strong chin acting so that Hannah can effectively stick her neck out for Connor.īut if the scenes between them are sharp and burnished with maternal energy, they pale in comparison to the protective energy that galvanizes the subplot about sweet alpha male sheriff Ethan Sawyer ( Jon Bernthal) and his pregnant wife Allison (MVP Medina Senghore). Not only is there no there there to this story, there’s really not much of a here there, either. A combustible game of cat and mouse ensues, a massive fire nipping at everyone’s heels all the while.Įverything that happens in “Those Who Wish Me Dead” is just tinder for the inferno that’s building in the background, and nobody bothers to pretend otherwise. Lucky for Hannah, she’ll get a shot at redemption when the accountant’s young son Connor (effective newcomer Finn Little) survives the ambush the bad guys set for his father and escapes into the trees with all of his dad’s most valuable secrets. Her name is Hannah Faber, and she’s been a wee bit self-destructive since failing to save a few teen boys from a recent blaze. ![]() The logic that knots these plots together is inane in a way that almost beggars description, but suffice it to say that a forensic accountant realizes that he’s next on the killers’ hit list and - without irony - hightails it to the survival school near the wooded mountains where Jolie’s character works. The rest of the film is just gravy after that. This is cinematic muscle memory at its finest it’s your body remembering scenes from “Commando” and “Cliffhanger” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight” that your brain long forgot. As they casually walk down the street a few minutes later, a splotch of fresh blood on their clothes, the shot is framed so that you just know the house is going to explode in the background. In a seemingly unrelated scene, two ominous types played by Aidan Gillen (of course) and Nicholas Hoult (why not!) pose as harmless electric inspectors in order to talk their way into a Florida district attorney’s home. ‘You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah’ Review: The Entire Sandler Family Serves Up a Sweet Coming-of-Age Comedy But in a story that could go in any number of directions from such an auspicious beginning, it’s what happens next that cements Sheridan’s film as the vintage stuff of braindead weekend viewing par excellence. That may not be high praise, but it sure as hell isn’t a complaint either.Īdapted from Michael Koryta’s 2014 novel of the same name, “Those Who Wish Me Dead” starts the way that every movie should: With “Salt” mode Angelina Jolie smoke-jumping into the cauldron of a Montana wildfire. In 2021, it can’t help but feel like an unintended anachronism as if Sheridan aimed for something that matched the gravitas he wrote into “Sicario” or the dark portent he blew into “ Wind River,” fell very far short, and landed in a pillowy bed of old popcorn instead. A simple but smoldering throwback to the days when all you needed to make a decent action film was a big star, a striking location, and a few cold henchman carrying those fancy machine guns with the red laser sights, Taylor Sheridan’s “ Those Who Wish Me Dead” is nothing short of the most rock-solid blockbuster of the 1994 summer movie season.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |