Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)

[Mike Blakesley]

This movie is a crowd pleaser, as evidenced by people's comments coming out (sample: "That was INTENSE!").

I fail to see why screenwriters feel the need to include so many fuckin' f-bombs in the fuckin' movie. I mean fuck, it's like every other fuckin' sentence has at least one or more fucks. It gets fuckin' tiresome and it's completely fuckin' unnecessary. In fact it's fuckin' distracting, especially when fuckin' women are doing it. (Although yes, I've heard women talk that way, I fuckin' admit it.) A well placed FUCK! can be very effective, but this movie would have been a fuck of a lot better with fewer fucks in the script.

I have not watched the movie yet but will be watching it in a couple of hours, and will post my actual review after that.

[Mike Blakesley]

Pretty good thriller of a movie, with a fairly predictable story. The bad guys in this one are some of the baddest bad guys ever seen in a movie. I mean these guys are really really bad. The plot is kind of simple: A guy is being chased by hitmen because he has info that will incriminate an unseen mob boss. The hitmen's orders: Kill the guy and his family. So he is on the run to hang out with his brother in law in Montana, because every man wants his on-the-run brother-in-law to come and spend a few days. The hit-men chase the hero all the way to a Montana forest, where they successfully kill Dad, but the son (12-ish years old) manages to escape. So he's on the run, when he (fullfilling every 12-year-old's dream) happens to run into a a lonely Angelina Jolie, who is a firefighter with her own set of personal problems. And then, wackiness ensues.

We have here another movie from New Hollywood, which checks off many of the now-required boxes:

- At least one inter-racial couple in the movie
- Most of the heroic stuff is done by women
- The bad guys are a mixture of races too -- the two hitmen are white, but the boss of the bad guys is black. We never see HIS boss, so I don't know what color he is.
- If there is an attractive female star, be sure to show her in her underwear at least once, no matter how improbable the situation. (I never said these were bad rules.)

It all comes to a satisfying conclusion after a pretty high body count and approximately 300 F-bombs (including a couple from the kid), and everyone is happy - well, except the people who were killed.

Seriously though, it was a really entertaining movie and there were a few good squirm-in-the-chair moments. This is one of those movies that would be completely "meh" on TV but has much more of a wow factor on the big screen, and I'm not just talking about the scene where Angelina takes her shirt off.

They also managed to get the Montana details right, even though the movie was filmed in New Mexico and (I've heard) Canada. Things like license plates, county and town names, etc. are accurate, so that was impressive.

The actors all do credible work, especially Tyler Little who plays the imperiled kid. And the inevitable forest fire scenes are very well done. My friend Keith is a firefighter himself, and even he was impressed.

Overall, I would give it 3 out of 5 stars.

[Bobby Henderson]

Does the movie have more F-bombs than the HBO series "Deadwood?" If so, that would be pretty impressive.

[Mike Blakesley]

I couldn't answer that, I don't have HBO, but I've heard that Yellowstone (the TV show) has a lot of language in it, and the director of this movie is involved with that, if that tells you anything.

[Mike Blakesley]

Update: The young actor playing the kid in the movie is Finn Little, not Tyler. I don't know where that came from.