Those Who Wish Me Dead

Taylor Sheridan is making an excellent case for returning to penning scripts by himself. After launching his writing career with a series of excellent solo screenplays, none better than Hell or High Water, he’s now been part of consecutive mediocre collaborations with the recent Without Remorse, which specializes in groan-inducing dialogue, and Those Who Wish Me Dead, concocted with Michael Koryta, on whose novel by the same name the film is based, and Charles Leavitt (In the Heart of the Sea).

Their tale of Montana smokejumper Hannah (Angelina Jolie, looking increasingly like her father) protecting tween Connor (a pleasantly non-whiney Finn Little) from a pair of hitmen (Nicholas Hoult and Aiden Gillen) is beautifully lensed by Sheridan’s Wind River cinematographer Ben Richardson and anchored by a handful of tightly constructed set-pieces that have the director’s wonderfully gritty fingerprints all over them.

But it’s in connecting these core scenes that the writing team struggles, peppering in dopey dialogue for the cliché contract killers and largely sidelining its two most engaging characters, married survivalists played by Jon Bernthal and Medina Senghore (Happy!). It also doesn’t help that the excellent 2017 ensemble film Only the Brave already did justice to smokejumpers, leaving Those Who Wish Me Dead feeling like no better than reheated cinematic leftovers.

Grade: C-minus. Rated R. Now playing at Biltmore Grande and Carolina Cinemark, and available to stream via HBO Max through June 13

(Photo: Warner Bros.)