THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD: Nature Always Bites Back

With the 2021 Those Who Wish Me Dead, director Taylor Sheridan, along with his co-writers, didn’t just craft a survival thriller. They put their anger towards the corruption and social hierarchies, which threaten to ravage the American wilderness like an unforgiving parasite. Following in the footsteps of Sicario (2015), Hell or High Water (2016), and Wind River (2017), Sheridan is interested in the American landscape as its own character.

The story, set in the Montana wilderness, revolves around a veteran smokejumper, Hannah (Angelina Jolie) who has been relegated to watching for forest fires from a lookout tower. She continues to suffer trauma after a previous forest fire claimed the lives of children, whom she failed to save due to her sudden fears. She crosses paths with a young boy, Connor (Finn Little), who is on the run from two hitmen, as he is in possession of incriminating evidence. With a storm brewing, Hannah is left but with no choice but to protect the boy at all costs as the hitmen try to catch them by any means necessary.

Unrest in the West

Sheridan‘s have often focused on the individual’s perception of justice versus that of the collective, and the line between the law and vigilantism. They have an inherent fascination with the United States legal system and what it means to operate outside the law if one believes the system has failed them (an example being frontier justice). They explored the relationship between those who enforced their own brand of justice and the vastness of the North American landscapes. They boasted many sensibilities and tropes of the American Western genre, down to the idea of the lone gunslinger taking matters into their own hands.

In Those Who Wish Me Dead, characters are thrown into the labyrinthine environment of a grand forest, where they are defined by their actions rather than their ideologies. While the film evokes the enticing elements of Sheridan‘s scripts, it is, at its best, a solid nuts-and-bolts survival thriller. More plot-driven than narrative-centric, the film is more interested in functioning as a metaphor about how nature is unforgiving to the intruders who abuse it. The characters are all an interesting presence, but you might be left wanting to know much more about them than you are served.

Because of that, the potentially intriguing dynamic between Hannah and Connor is simplified to accommodate the film’s speedy pace. When Hannah encounters Connor, he had just suffered his first life-changing event, one that is sure to scar him for a good while. However, when they are both in each other’s company within hours of meeting each other, they crack jokes with one another, like Connor never experienced any trauma that day, and was simply lost. Perhaps it’s meant as a defence mechanism that Hannah employs to combat her own demons, but it feels a little too expedited for its own good.

It is a film with great urgency but doesn’t allow one to peel away the many layers it could have fashioned for itself. We expect those layers because of Sheridan‘s involvement in the aforementioned trilogy, particularly in the richly-textured Sicario.

However, where the film does shine in how it functions as a Neo-western, with sheriffs, mercenary types, and survivalists who become embroiled in an adventure that has stakes, mystery, and mayhem. There is an intensity in the way scenes of action and violence play out that sell you on the idea that these characters mean business.

In the context of Sheridan’s stories, the film is an examination of how the primal nature of survival eclipses man-made laws, especially when the legal jurisdiction is breached and deemed impractical. By contrasting the lives of those in the city with those in the woods, the film almost suggests that the anarchist’s way of life is far more appealing than any social contract. That is to say that the community is more preferable to any corporate overlord and that egalitarianism is the lives we could all be enjoying. It is in the characters of Sheriff Ethan Sawyer (Jon Bernthal) and his pregnant wife, Allison (Medina Singhore) where the idea of systematic law & order seems to fade into the past.

Unpacking the elements

For what it seems to lack in the script department, the film benefits from a strong cast and crew, who are more than ready to deliver the goods. Jolie elevates her character by imbuing her with a seamless mix of sensitivity and playfulness. She’s never afraid to smile or ooze charisma even in the more morose scenes and brings a motherly quality to her dynamic with Little, who himself convincingly plays a child who braves through his misfortunes. For the assassins, Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult bring an interesting father-son dynamic to the mix, where the former plays with the idea of being practical and worrisome, while the latter excels at playing a cold-hearted demon child.

Ben Richardson photographs nature in a way that it dwarfs the mere mortals who inhabit its space, while also marking every set piece with a sense of dread. The music effortlessly shifts from the melancholic to the ominous, while the sound design guarantees the heft of an impact, whether it be from a burst of bullets or from a bolt of lightning.

Despite the fact that the threatening wildfires more often than not reveal their visual-effects trickery, they effectively scream danger and end up taking on a whole other meaning when the forest becomes consumed in flames. There is almost a poetic quality to the way the forest is lit up, almost like it conjures up fairy-tale imagery.

Conclusion

While it may not be as ambitious or as deep as it could have been, Those Who Wish Me Dead is an exciting genre film with all the right elements and a charismatic performance from Angelina Jolie.

Those Who Wish Me Dead will be released in the United States and on HBO Max on May 14th, 2021. For all other releases, click here.

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