Those Who Wish Me Dead – An Entertaining Slow Burn

Those Who Wish Me Dead marks the first film from the Warner Bros. and HBO Max deal that justifies seeing it from the comfort of one’s own home instead of in the theater. It not only features a prominent list of actors but also a director whose writing ability along with his skills behind the camera offer full confidence in producing a quality film. However, there is a cinematic blockbuster element that prevents the movie from ever rising beyond simply being “good.” While some might take this previous statement as an insult towards the film, good films can be perfectly normal and more importantly still be entertaining to watch. After all, the converse is much more painful.

Based on the novel by Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead follows a teenager named Connor (Little) who happened to witness to a murder related to a case of potential government corruption. From there, two assassins named Jack (Aidan Gillen) and Patrick (Nicholas Hoult) were on Connor’s trail as he seeks refuge in the woods of Montana alongside his uncle Ethan (Jon Bernthal) and a firefighter named Hannah (Jolie) who was determined to keep him safe at all costs. On its surface, the film can easily appear as a familiar crime drama with a fearful witness on the run at its center which is further emphasized by a trailer that does little to elevate it from being something more. And yet, there are other factors at play beyond its surface that possess flashes of potential that are never fully explored which only limits its potential emotional impact. This fact is mostly identified in the dialogue between characters where much is left unspoken, relying on subtext and facial cues to elaborate on emotional connections, a trait the source material achieves but did not carry over to the screen.

What saves the film’s emotional focus from being completely unsuccessful is the star power that knows how to get the most out of the script. More surprising is that this does not begin with Jolie but rather Little, Bernthal, Gillen, and Hoult. Little provides an exceptional performance that in many other child actor’s hands would produce a highly inferior portrayal that would easily lack authenticity, while Bernthal takes the material and infuses it with a sense of honor and sacrifice that is more than a stereotypical police officer in a sleepy mountain town. But the most interesting portrayals were by Gillen and Hoult who deftly avoid the tropes of such characters that are well-trodden from similar films. This approach is a more practical and frankly, a more chilling, method of showing killers without remorse that see people as a means to an end.

No matter how many aspects of the source material that Those Who Wish Me Dead gets right, it still leaves more to be desired. It’s a film that does provide some entertainment value and is a slow burn (pun intended) of action that fans of Sheridan will understand and expect. The difference between this film and Sheridan’s other work is that despite its best efforts there is little to no emotional connection to the characters which is a huge letdown that could’ve lead to a superior film. Delivering enough intrigue and action to keep viewers engaged for its runtime, it does little to dissuade the very obvious misstep of creating an emotional space for its characters to exist in and rather quickly moves from these moments into tension-filled setpieces that are the film’s main propulsion.

In the end, despite its shortcomings, Those Who Wish Me Dead is not a terrible film but falls somewhere in the middle of being a good one. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

still courtesy of Warner Bros.

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