‘Those Who Wish Me Dead’ Review: Angelina Jolie Fights Fire, and Looks Great While Doing It

Angelina Jolie‘s makeup never once gets smudged throughout the duration of Those Who Wish Me Dead, the upcoming thriller releasing simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max this Friday (May 14). Not when she gets struck by lightning. Not when she’s crying. Not even when she dives into a river after running through fire.

It’s hard to tell if this calls for a “Yes, girl,” cheering on of Jolie’s glamour, or a critique of director Taylor Sheridan’s lack of attention to detail in creating a realistic world for his story. Perhaps Sheridan felt this sacrifice was worth it, because it is fun to see Jolie parachute off of the back of a pickup truck, or punch Nicholas Hoult in the face, all while rocking her fabulous smoky eyeshadow. And beyond serving as Jolie’s return to the sort of self-serious action films that made her famous, there’s not much else remarkable about Those Who Wish Me Dead.

Jolie stars as Hannah Faber, a one-of-the-dudes firefighter who failed her psych eval following a traumatic wildfire where she watched children and co-workers die. As a result, she’s stuck on lookout tower duty: sitting in a really tall structure in the middle of the Montana forest and watching for signs of smoke. Needless to say, she’s not happy about this assignment, and she makes that clear to her buddy Ethan (Jon Bernthal), the town’s local sheriff.

Elsewhere in Montana, a single father named Owen (Jake Weber) takes his son Connor (Finn Little) on the run after he hears on the news that his boss was killed. Owen correctly assumes that the two assassins (Nicholas Hoult and Aiden Gillen) who killed his boss will come after him next. Why? It’s not clear. All we know is that Owen found out something those assassins don’t want him to know. Owen writes everything down in a letter, gives it to his son, and—moments before he is shot and killed by the assassins—tells Connor to bring that letter to someone he trusts. Or to the news. Either one.

After a brief and perplexing appearance from Tyler Perry as the big boss of the assassins, the gunmen are given a new mission: find and kill the boy. He knows too much. Earlier, the assassins had deduced—by finding a framed photo in his home, sure—that Owen and Connor were running to Owen’s buddy Ethan, the local Montana sheriff. They don’t know that Hannah found Connor alone in the woods, but they do know he’s out there somewhere. So they decide to light the whole forest on fire.

All of the above is just a convoluted means to end to get to the neo-Western action sequences, and those are quite fun to watch. In one particularly satisfying scene, Ethan’s pregnant wife (Medina Senghore, a stand-out newcomer) beats the crap out of the assassins using her wits and her survivalist instincts. Sheridan—who co-created the drama Yellowstone, and shares a writing credit on the Those Who Wish Me Dead script with Michael Koryta and Charles Leavitt—knows how to shoot a wilderness action scene. The fact that the movie is gorgeous doesn’t quite make up for the senseless plot, but it does help. Filmed in New Mexico, the sweeping shots of the magnificent treeline make it all the more devastating—and awe-inspiring—when they are ablaze.

As for Jolie, she’s clearly still got it. She may not look the part of a grizzled firefighter, but she speaks with an authority that makes you want to follow her into battle. It’s too bad her return to the genre didn’t come with a better story. But for her true fans, that likely won’t matter. Particularly because she looks so good the whole damn time.

Watch Those Who Wish Me Dead on HBO Max