The 2021 film Those Who Wish Me Dead is what happens when the 90s goes away for over 20 years and then resurfaces just to ask the question, “What if you replaced Steven Seagal with Angelina Jolie…?”
Well, for starters… you get a better movie. Plus, you get a protagonist that looks like they could do 20 sit-ups without having a heart attack. “How does Angelina Jolie look in a parachute…? Certainly better than Vin Diesel in a parachute…?” It’s the most sexless, assless HBO/Cinemaxiest movie to come along in quite some time.
Angelina Jolie stars as world’s hottest smokejumper, suffering with PTSD — or better yet, a setup for the worst puns imaginable — and luckily for us, Jolie’s bringing her B+ Game to a C+ movie. I’m as much a fan of Jolie as the next person who saw Girl, Interrupted in their hotel room in the early 2000’s as a 13 year-old kid and said, “It’s certainly no Cyborg 2 but then again, what is…?”
What might surprise many about this film is that the protagonist role is actually shared between Angelina Jolie and another character. Jolie runs into a teenage boy in the Montana woods who her character isn’t obligated to rescue or anything. This scenario is totally believable and essentially — every cliche, teenage boy’s dream. Unfortunately, he’s on the run from two assassins who’ve just murdered his father right in-front of him (in one of the most gruesomely hilarious deaths I’ve seen since that one time John Malkovich watched his wife willingly get into a burning car) so understandably, there’s no real time or need for him to be enamored with Angelina Jolie’s presence.
The film’s Best Supporting Bernthal award goes to Jon Bernthal, a frequent, yet solid-physical doorstop that also happens to be a pretty damn good actor. Jon Bernthal is a common result of when the producers originally want to hire Frank Grillo but then realize during pre-production — they have a somewhat larger budget to work with than originally anticipated and can now afford someone even better than Frank Grillo.
If you liked Fire Down Below and Firestorm, then your standards are pretty low… so you’re sure as shit to enjoy Those Who Wish Me Dead.
