If American actresses are big stars, then their careers threaten to stumble from around 40. From this age on, Hollywood is merciless in dealing with women and their roles. They are too old for the young lover, often too young for the mother role, a crux that sometimes leads to no less stereotypical evasions into other genres, as in the present case: Angelina Jolie, 46, got into a B-movie, that is more or less the substrate of her former career as an action heroine. Lara Croft, 20 years later, that could be the subtitle.
But stop! You don’t want to be unfair. After all, Jolie plays that role within the ensemble that is still the least woodcut-like. She is the firefighter Hannah, who suffers from a trauma because one day a fire cost the lives of children due to her wrong decision. She tries to cover up her anguish with tough slogans: The tough, hard-boiled loner is therefore allowed to say sentences like: “I screw.” not a man I watched shitting in the woods. “
Actionthriller
They Want Me Dead,
USA 2021
Directed by Taylor Sheridan. With: Angelina Jolie, Finn Little, Jon Bernthal. From June 3rd on Sky.
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The film that Warner is now releasing on Sky instead of in the cinema is just as rustic as this Sager. Bad guys are on the heels of a little boy named Connor (Finn Little) in the mountains of Montana, whose father has already been murdered. However, he still gave his son his secret, which could put politicians in distress, with him on the way.
Because Hannah is also in the area to fight inner demons, she runs into Connor on the run from the brutal persecutors. A game of cat and mouse begins in the woods, which comes to a head when a forest fire of epic breadth breaks out and threatens everyone involved. The opponents act like wolves gone wild: Jack (Aiden Gillen) and Patrick (Nicholas Hoult) pass over Corpses would also kill pregnant women and children for their clients without blinking an eyelid. It’s repulsively brutal what Sheridan is showing here, and you never really know whether the director wanted to direct a real action film or an inflated, extreme one. What the killers are actually looking for remains unclear, a MacGuffin in the best Hitchcock tradition, just not very ingeniously made.
Haudrauf-Finale
As a survival thriller, “They Want Me Dead” is staged in an exciting way, the characters remain flat and monosyllabic, but that almost inevitably belongs to the genre. There is also a little criticism of America (“We are in Montana, we can assume that one is armed”). There is a violent brawl finale, and before the fire reaches its peak, we see Ms. Jolie skillfully brandishing an ax too. It may well be that you want to see the film for that alone. Or because she was struck by lightning twice and still looks damn good afterwards. After all: Angelina Jolie was and is never too good for a good dose of action. And that enables her to still make films like this in anti-aging Hollywood: Jolie cuts a fine figure as a rushed, bloody and never giving up action heroine, even Hollywood has to recognize that. She is a master of the illusion and the aesthetics of the tormented fighter nature.
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