“If you did the right thing then why are you so scared?”

In Those Who Wish Me Dead, former action movie star Angelina Jolie returns to the genre to portray a rugged backcountry firefighter; a smokejumper whose day job involves parachuting into remote regions of Montana in order to control forest fires and rescue civilians who may be in harm’s way. After a traumatic experience involving the crispy deaths of three children, Hannah (Jolie) failed her psychological evaluation and has thus been assigned to lookout duty—a seemingly unwise decision by the chief because it isolates her alone in the watchtower with only her thoughts for company. From this lofty monolithic prison, Hannah wallows in self pity, clogs the emergency radio channels with passive aggressive chatter, and runs up the bill on the satellite phone with teary heart-to-hearts.

While ignoring her professional responsibilities and wandering around in a nearby valley, Hannah stumbles across the bloodied and scared Connor (Finn Little) who is on the run from two hitmen (Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult). He’s witnessed the ruthless murder of his own father (Jake Weber) and carries with him a few slips of paper containing secrets that would expose a powerful man (Tyler Perry) who will stop at nothing to ensure all loose ends are cut off. Sensing that fate has hand-delivered her a chance at absolution, Hannah commits to helping Connor escape the assassins and the raging forest fire that they have started to distract law enforcement from their pursuit.

Although Jolie is certainly the highest profile name in the cast—and stands out with some humorous line deliveries and a motherly bond with her young co-star—Hannah is arguably not the main character of Those Who Wish Me Dead. Indeed, as Hannah waits in the watchtower feeling sorry for herself, local sheriff Ethan (Jon Bernthal) and his heavily-pregnant, survival school administrator wife Allison (Medina Senghore) take a far more active role in aiding Connor. But those two characters and their relationship also feel only half-explored, exposing the film’s primary shortcoming: it cannot decide if it is a densely plotted neo-noir thriller, a ruminative character study (and if so, which character it is studying), or a mindless action movie. It has elements of all three sprinkled throughout its hour and forty minutes, but it never fully commits to any of them and suffers because of it.

It can’t rely upon its plot because it is too vague for us to ever care about it in a meaningful way. We know that Owen (Weber) is a forensic accountant who found something that led to his D.A. boss’s explosive death. We know that the gist of that something is tucked away in Connor’s pocket. But as the narrative develops, the stakes simply do not include the potential ramifications of the note’s contents; we care only for the survival of the principal characters. In other words, Owen’s discovery is a big old MacGuffin. Which is fine, but then do we need all the extra exposition to set up an overarching narrative that never pans out? Do we need a Tyler Perry cameo to inform us that there’s a ruthless mogul sending these hitmen after the young boy?

One would hope that this lack of emphasis on the narrative would mean that the trio of screenwriters adapting Michael Koryta’s novel (the author himself, director Taylor Sheridan, and Charles Leavitt) chose to focus on characters. But this is not the case either. There’s certainly enough time spent with a number of characters to give them some extra dimensions, but they are mostly single-note. And because so much time is spent unnecessarily setting up a larger conflict that peters out into nothing, most of the attempts to sketch out the characters feel forced and ring hollow. Early on, at a company BBQ included to develop a sense of blue collar camaraderie, Hannah proves how crazy she is by pulling the ripcord on her parachute while standing in the back of a speeding pickup truck. When Connor and his dad are pulled off on the side of the road to take a leak while running for their lives, Connor becomes transfixed by a horse. But the film never returns to these asides, and as a result, they feel inorganic.

With the focus spread out amongst its various elements so liberally, surprisingly little attention is given to developing the central relationship between Hannah and Connor, which renders some potentially emotive moments completely limp, despite Jolie’s nurturing touch. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the characters are downright poorly written and only achieve a modicum of believability because the cast overachieves. Particular commendation is due to Senghore as Allison, who is given poignant material in limited screen time and conveys incredible tenacity.

And but so all we’re left with is a modern action movie with interesting subject matter that is hamstrung by undercooked attempts at a complex narrative and character study. Sheridan is a competent director of gritty, small-scale action and the violent scenes here definitely work on a visceral level. The audience is kept on their toes by the grotesquely evil assassins, one of whom is mid-heart-change but still willing to carry out his partner’s ruthless orders. You get the sense that Connor, at least, will survive, but that all others are candidates for getting caught in the line of fire. On a pulse-raising level, it works as it should.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a shallow thriller, of course. But Taylor Sheridan is capable of producing more dynamic and distinctive works than Those Who Wish Me Dead.