Those Who Wish Me Dead review – Angelina Jolie feels the heat in forest fire thriller - The Guardian

Angry, boozy and haunted by her past, a smoke-jumper faces unexpected dangers in this fierce action film set in the Montana wilderness.

Hannah, played by Jolie, is a specialist firefighter called a smoke-jumper: the kind who is ’coptered directly into forest blazes.

But this plan is to end up with lonely, scared Connor stumbling through the forest utterly alone, being tracked by two deeply sinister and ruthless assassins played by Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult.

And the only person who can help is smoke-jumper Hannah, surveying the forest for conflagrations from her watchtower.

Almost everyone in the film is in danger of being upstaged, as well as horribly murdered, by Gillen and Hoult, in their black suits and fake law enforcement badges, whacking everyone who could identify them.

It isn’t entirely clear what the point was for the arsonists in setting this new forest fire (its diversionary advantage is surely annulled by the difficulties it creates), and it is disconcerting that Hannah and Connor have to hike through the crackling wood and then turn back and take shelter once more up in their tower.