Directed by Taylor Sheridan
Written by Michael Koryta, Charles Leavitt, Taylor Sheridan
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Hoult, Aidan Gillen, Jon Bernthal
Rated R for strong violence, and language throughout
Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes
In theaters and streaming on HBO Max May 14

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, The Red Herring

Taylor Sheridan’s name first came to my attention with Hell or High Water, a modern western that managed to depict economic hardship without grandstanding (I still haven’t seen Sicario and I have no plans to change that). Sadly, Wind River felt well-intentioned but missed the mark in a lot of key ways. He also penned the script for Without Remorse, which turned out to be a disaster (I do secretly aspire to watch Yellowstone, the Kevin Costner show Sheridan co-created) . Walking into Those Who Wish Me Dead, I was looking for signs that High Water wasn’t going to be the lone Sheridan project I was able to enjoy. At this point, I was relieved to find that this movie was a solid thriller.

Those Who Wish Me Dead gets off to a rocky start, setting up characters in multiple locations before tying them all together by the end of the first act. The plot is set into motion when a pair of hitmen (Aiden Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) attempt to silence potential whistleblower Owen (Jake Weber). Owen and his son Connor (Finn Little) flee their Florida home to seek help from Owen’s brother-in-law Ethan (Jon Bernthal), who is a sheriff in rural Montana. When Connor finds himself alone in the woods, he is helped by Hannah(Angeline Jolie), a smokejumper dealing with trauma from a previous wildfire and assigned to fire tower duty. As the situation escalates, Hannah and Connor find themselves caught between the hitmen and a wildfire. 

There’s a fair bit of True Grit DNA woven into the relationship between Hannah and Connor, and Jolie makes for a convincing Rooster Cogburn replacement. The past that haunts her involves some other boys around Connor’s age, and the healing arc for her is the clearest and best executed part of the film. Everything else around these two characters is plot, and it is delivered with enough speed and pacing to give the story a proper sense of momentum and stakes. This is more of a crime thriller than it is a wilderness survival story, but there are a couple of sequences involving lightning and nearby wildfire that are as thrilling as anything that involves people shooting at each other. As Jolie’s first thriller since 2010’s Salt, it marks a welcome return, and she fits surprisingly well into Sheridan’s unglamorous modern frontier. 

As a lifelong urban coast dweller, I appreciate the way that the transition from Florida to Montana mesmerizes the young Connor. Despite the sense of danger, the mountains and trees are captivating in their beauty (as is a random horse he encounters). This is contrasted by the attitudes of the hitmen, as Gileen’s character often mutters how he hates being in this rural environment. It isn’t that the setting is ‘another character’ in the film, but the attitudes of the characters towards the environment adds an additional bit of moral shading. Nature rewards the resourceful, while those who don’t learn about it do so at their peril.  

From his repeated attempts to bring the genre into the present day, Sheridan clearly loves the western. Those Who Wish Me Dead captures that aptly, but (thankfully) doesn’t try and elevate it. The characters are defined well-enough to make the plot chug along, and choosing to have this come in well under two hours helps give the impression of a taut thriller. There’s just enough of each of the pieces here to make this a solid watching experience. As more and more ‘prestige crime’ stories find their way to the television format, it is a relief to have a story wrap in a way that is both succinct and satisfying.