Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
Directed by Taylor Sheridan
No — Those Who Wish Me Dead is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Taylor Sheridan's Those Who Wish Me Dead arrives as sturdy neo-western machinery, the sort of mid-budget thriller that once filled theaters in September and now materializes on a streaming service beside everything else.
Consciousness Markers
The cast includes Medina Senghore as a capable pregnant woman with a substantial action role, plus Tyler Perry and Tory Kittles in supporting parts, but these are natural, uncommented-upon inclusions in a conventional thriller.
Angelina Jolie headlines as a smokejumper and Senghore's Allison fights off and kills an assassin, but this is standard action-genre capability rather than a feminist thesis.
The assassins work for a corrupt employer whom the forensic-accountant victim has evidence against, giving a faint corporate-corruption undertone, but the film has no economic critique or eat-the-rich messaging.
A massive forest fire drives the plot, but it is deliberately ignited by assassins as a diversion, not framed as a climate-change parable or environmental warning.
A squarely traditional 90s-style action thriller that delivers spectacle without moralizing or preaching to the audience.
No LGBTQ+ characters, themes, or subtext appear anywhere in the film.
The film features Black actors in supporting roles but makes no comment on race, racism, or racial identity whatsoever.
No body-positivity themes or messaging are present.
No neurodivergent characters or themes are depicted.
The film is a fictional thriller with no historical revisionism or reframing of real events.
Why it received this score
Taylor Sheridan's Those Who Wish Me Dead arrives as sturdy neo-western machinery, the sort of mid-budget thriller that once filled theaters in September and now materializes on a streaming service beside everything else. Angelina Jolie plays Hannah, a smokejumper haunted by a fire she could not control, and the film asks her to do the things such films ask: run, climb, endure, and eventually swing an axe with feeling. It is competent, it is grim, and it is entirely uninterested in saying anything about the world beyond the tree line.
On the matter of social consciousness, the ledger is thin. Medina Senghore's Allison is pregnant, capable, and handed a genuine action sequence in which she outmaneuvers and kills one of her interrogators, which registers as casting and capability in the traditional genre sense. Black performers appear throughout in supporting parts, and the film declines to comment on that fact, which is its own kind of restraint. There is no queer presence, no body-positive messaging, no neurodivergent characterization, and no attempt to reframe history. The corporate employer who hired the assassins supplies a faint whiff of boardroom rot, though the film treats it as a plot mechanism instead of an indictment.
The forest fire is the central spectacle, and it is set deliberately by men with flares, which spares us any sermon about the climate. Sheridan keeps his politics in his pocket and delivers a chase. It is a picture made for grown-ups seeking realistic diversion, and it offers exactly that. The result is lean, well-made, and almost aggressively unremarkable in its cultural commitments. A sommelier would call it a clean, uncomplicated vintage. Drink it now.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
A young boy finds himself pursued by two assassins in the Montana wilderness, with a survival expert determined to protect him, and a forest fire threatening to consume them all.
Questions about Those Who Wish Me Dead
Is Those Who Wish Me Dead woke?
No — Those Who Wish Me Dead is not woke, scoring 12 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Those Who Wish Me Dead have any woke elements?
Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Representation Casting at 28.
How does Those Who Wish Me Dead compare to other 2021 movies?
It ranks #152 of the 242 films from 2021 we've scored; their average is 23. The wokest is The Forever Purge (83).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.