Those Who Wish Me Dead

Angeli­na Jolie has not appeared as a human woman in a Hol­ly­wood stu­dio pro­duc­tion for six long years. Though she’s occu­pied her­self in the mean­time with some ani­mat­ed voiceover work, a block­bust­ing stint in the Malef­i­cent fran­chise, and a kid-lit mashup so awful it bare­ly got a release in the US, she hasn’t tak­en a role that requires depth or empa­thy or nuance – you know, act­ing – since 2015’s By the Sea.

In that respect, Tay­lor Sheridan’s new film Those Who Wish Me Dead gets off to a pos­i­tive start by stick­ing Jolie in the type of gig that made her one of the last great spec­i­mens of the movie star species. As smoke jumper Han­nah Faber, she gets the chance to play a flinty Mon­tana gal with a con­cealed edge, quick with a quip if only to obscure the pain she’s car­ry­ing inside.

She still feels kind of bad about let­ting those kids die in that mas­sive for­est fire a lit­tle while back, a wafer-thin back­sto­ry as vague as it is mild, artic­u­lat­ed through a gri­mace or two. A chance at redemp­tion comes in the form of young ward Con­nor (Finn Lit­tle), wit­ness to his father’s mur­der, now pur­sued by a pair of no-non­sense assas­sins (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) for know­ing too much. About what? Again, the writ­ing waves away the ques­tion with a pro­saical­ly giv­en answer of ​‘gang stuff, or whatever.’

Sheri­dan takes his sweet time in guid­ing these two char­ac­ters to one anoth­er, iso­lat­ing them in indi­vid­ual plot­lines that only con­verge after half an hour in, as if to test the dif­fer­ence between con­fi­dent pac­ing and lop­sid­ed­ness. But even once she’s tak­en the reins of the film, Jolie can only do so much with this con­fused, under­de­vel­oped char­ac­ter as she’s pit­ted against the forces of nature. (Includ­ing, in one laugh­able scene, clus­tered light­ning strikes that turn tra­vers­ing a field into an absurd game of life-and-death Frogger.)

That the range of her emot­ing restricts itself to the occa­sion­al mourn­ful glow­er, urgent run­ning being her appar­ent pri­ma­ry mode of expres­sion over talk­ing, is one thing. In Sheridan’s dusty uni­verse of neo-west­erns, the strong silent types and their stiff upper lips still rep­re­sent the ide­al of sto­ic pow­er. It’s quite anoth­er that the film hard­ly knows what to do with the for­mi­da­ble woman com­mand­ing it.

Here, fem­i­nin­i­ty baf­fles the writer that gave Emi­ly Blunt the role of a life­time not so long ago in Sicario. One throw­away line of dia­logue means to neu­tralise the bizarre dis­so­nance of see­ing the wil­lowy Jolie sur­round­ed in her squad by a half-dozen hulk­ing, jacked dudes, but there’s no account­ing for scenes that have Jolie in full hair and make­up for the thick of the action, or the clum­si­ly insert­ed shot reveal­ing that she’s still wear­ing a cam­era-ready under­wire bra while sta­tioned alone on a remote outpost.

It’s a grim sign indeed that Sheri­dan gives an at-least-equal star treat­ment to the infer­no that con­sumes a grow­ing patch of wood­lands along with the sec­ond act. Embell­ished by a smeary, dis­tract­ing CGI, the blaze that sets the scene for the cli­mac­tic con­fronta­tion com­mands the cam­era in con­stant aer­i­al views dur­ing which we’re meant to mar­vel at the scale, instead of inspect the frame for com­put­erised sutures.

Oth­er, more minor sins here and there erad­i­cate the good­will one might hold for a film that dares to be an orig­i­nal, mod­est-mind­ed star vehi­cle at a time when IP reigns supreme. There’s the bit in which the alpha-male fire­fight­ers bul­ly a guy at a bar for the temer­i­ty to wear glass­es, or the bit where the lone char­ac­ter of colour (depict­ed as lit­er­al­ly bare­foot and preg­nant) must endure frankly depict­ed vio­lence for a nasty cheap thrill, both drag­ging down the over­all lik­a­bil­i­ty factor.

Where Sheridan’s ear­li­er scripts evinced a keen under­stand­ing of place and a nov­el approach to action tropes, his lat­est lacks that win­ning speci­fici­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in its stunt­ed mis­un­der­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes plau­si­ble, ratio­nal behav­iour. Jolie burns bright, and yet all the film around her can do is fizzle.