Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)......looks like one of those movies that was probably rewritten and re-shot repeatedly before finally limping its way into our blighted, toxic Pandemic universe.....
We can see why it attracted Angelina Jolie.......as an opportunity to flex her acting chops and remind everybody she's more than capable of handling kick-ass action sequences.
And as an action movie, it's got a few things going for it.......a truly hellish depiction of a raging forest fire and a pair of ruthless hitmen (well played by Aiden Gillen and Nicholas Hoult) eliminating witnesses to some vast criminal scandal.....(overseen by, of all people, Tyler Perry.. who knows, maybe the witnesses had damaging polaroids of him in full Madea drag....)
The assassins' hit parade leads them to the wilds of Montana, where they start their very own forest fire to, we assume, better assist them in bumping off the young boy who might possess vital info from his late dad, the last poor sucker on the rub-out list.
Lucky for this kid he runs into Angelina Jolie, a fearless firefighter now relegated to a remote lookout tower due to her recent reckless suicidal behavior........caused by traumatic flashbacks of seeing children she couldn't rescue in time die horribly in a previous fire.
With this set-up, you just know that our Angie's going to cleanse her tortured soul by going on the run with the feisty tyke, with the two of them desperately trying to escape both the hit-guys and the humungous fire the not-so-bright hit-guys started.......(it never occurred to these dummies that they'd end up stuck in the same fire as their potential victims......)
There's not much more to say about this movie.......other than its aspirations to become something more than a casual time waster to stream or rent don't amount to much. We didn't mind sitting through it since it reminded us a little of those star-driven action thumpers that use to fill up the muti-plexes in the 1990's....(where it would've served well as a vehicle for Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis, Shwarrzengger or Stallone....)
2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2). Wait'll it pops up on some cable or streaming service that you've already subscribed to......no point in wasting any extra money on it.
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