‘Those Who Wish Me Dead’ is an average action thriller

Posted on May 21, 2021

By MARK VIOLA

Sometimes I hear about a movie, see who is acting in it and who is behind the camera writing and directing, and I’m left with a particular impression. Then, I watch the film’s trailer, and it reinforces that initial impression. Finally, I go see that movie, and it turns out my preconceived notions were incorrect, providing me a surprise — sometimes good and other times bad.

“Those Who Wish Me Dead’ was not one of those movies. Instead, it is everything, for good and ill, that I expected based on the cast, the writer and director, and the trailer. I can say the movie has a top-notch cast, and it is well-directed, with some solid action and tension. Unfortunately, all of that is weighed down with a clunky script that never allows the film’s various assets to become anything more than the sum of their parts.

Let me be clear, the film is solid, although certainly average when it comes to action thrillers. If you have HBO Max, where the film is also available, it’s probably worth the two hours if you saw the trailer and thought it looked interesting. It’s probably not worth a trip to a movie theater (like the one I took to go see it), especially considering the thing I was looking forward most to experiencing on the big screen — the forest fire — isn’t really on screen much.

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