Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

Directed by Taylor Sheridan. Starring Angelina Jolie, Aidan Gillen, Nicholas Hoult, Jon Bernthal, Finn Little, Jake Weber, Medina Senghore. [R]

Jolie is unconvincing as a smokejumper haunted by tragedy, but almost everything feels a little off in this unexciting pursuit thriller, including the common sense of both the hunters and the hunted. After executing the father of a pouty, nonproprietary kid played by Little, assassins Gillen and Hoult track the youth and protector/escort Jolie through the Montana wilds as a forest fire sweeps through the area (one that they intentionally started themselves, the dolts). A tame and disjointed affair, photographed in sterile color tones, and never able to generate, let alone sustain, any sense of real danger or momentum. Even its basic premise doesn’t fully pay off since the fiery threat almost never becomes a visceral obstacle that affects the characters, who should all be gagging from smoke inhalation during the ludicrous climax. Jolie and Little generate so, ahem, little affinity with each other they may as well have filmed their scenes separately with stand-ins. Adapted from a novel by Michael Koryta. Steven Zaillian is one of the producers; Tyler Perry cameos.

42/100