TheMovieman

I had watched this last night and it's exactly what I thought it would be, fine but forgettable.

Rob V

Again, thank you HBO Max for making this "free to me"... because had I spent even $5 on a rental, I'd be pissed. This movie - while providing some intense scenes - was so nonsensical that it hurt my brain to try and figure out why all this was happening. I guess I missed it, but did we ever figure out why two elite agents were murdering top officials? And didn't the main "bad guy" actually not get caught? I guess we are to assume he did or there will be a sequel where the fires are even more dangerous? What crap 1/5.

Rob V

You need to imply a lot in order for this movie to make sense... like why didn't they kill John Berenthal's character? He survives a face to face beating and begging them to kill him... only to be shot by a random spray from 300 feet away and die anyhow.

TomOpus

I thought they needed his tracking skills to find the boy.

devilshalo

It also gave them a slight bit of leverage if his wife were to return since she escaped. And the main assassin did say he wasn't quite right dealing with the pain of not just being burned, but he got hit by a car, too.

GoldenJCJ

Yeah, that was a pretty big loose end. They seemed to imply that as soon as the kid took the story to the media that he would be safe but since Nicholas Hoult and Littlefinger appeared to just be hired hitmen in a much larger organization, my first thought at the end was, “So, tomorrow they’ll just send two new guys out to kill the kid?”

The big bad guy sounded like it was just a corporation who was stealing money. I don’t think any one person was behind the whole thing.

Pointyskull

I just took that as a MacGuffin there to drive the characters along.

As for my take on the film, it was watchable but kind of dopey overall. I dug the Cliffhanger-esque vibes, though I guess I should just go watch Cliffhanger again.

DJariya

I just finished this as well. It was decent. I'd probably give it a B. Had some decent action and suspense sequences. Although I felt like the main conflict was a little underwritten without much resolution.

I admit, I haven't really liked Angelina Jolie's recent output, but I thought this was one of her better recent films.

Looks like this movie is a huge box office loss for WB. I have to assume with HBO Max being an option, this wasn't the type of movie that screamed seeing it in a theatre.

I think if this got a traditional release, it still would have been a box office disappointment. I think this would have made no more than $20-30M tops. Jolie just doesn't have the kind of star power to pull in big box office for a non big IP movie.

dex14

So basically like what had been happening pre-pandemic with all of WB’s other adult oriented fare.

DaveNinja

Watched this over the weekend. Wow that was some bad fire CGI

PerryD

I think I enjoyed this movie. It felt a little short/edited down. The survivalist wife was great, but not sure why the Bernthal character needed to be an ex-boyfriend of Jolie. And did they give his condition at the end of the movie? And what happened to the kid?

Not sure we needed to see the dream sequence / memories multiple times either. We get the point that Jolie's in bad shape after the first time.

But I love having first run movies available to stream.

DJariya

The behind the scenes feature on HBO Max said the forest being burned down was practical. They created their own forest and burned it down.

I'm sure there were some of it was enhanced by CG.

GoldenJCJ

Toddarino

I assumed the upper parts of government were involved considering Tyler Perry’s plates were government issue.

Osiris3657

Was alright. I saw one critic call it a "90's style" action movie, and that seems very fitting. You'll be entertained, but forget about it shortly after.

Decker

Watched it tonight before it leaves. Thought it was not bad. Nothing memorable but at least watchable.
Thought it was a little bit weird that a movie about fire fighters decided to Yada Yada the putting out of a forest fire, as the blaze goes from a raging inferno to smoldering ash in a single scene cut.

More than anything though, I HATE the title. Somehow it manages to hit the holy trinity of bad movie title attributes - - too wordy, instantly forgettable and completely irrelevant to the movie. After watching it, not only do I not know who the title is referring to (Littlefinger & Beast, Tyler Perry, unseen mobsters, the fire?), I don't even know who the "Me" in the title is (Jolie or the kid).
The English language has literally hundreds of metaphors involving fire, the writers and the marketing teams couldn't think of one of them?

dex14

It's the same title as the book the film is based on. I like the title and it seems pretty straight forward to me.

RichC2

The lightning element seemed like an unnecessary addition and scared the absolute hell out of my dog

This was more an ensemble movie than I expected. Not great but not bad.

Shannon Nutt

This movie was laughably bad...but in an entertaining way. I mean, so many stupid people doing stupid things. My favorite though is when the Nicholas Hoult character is going after Angelina Jolie, who is hiding behind a tree...so this brainiac (who has a gun versus Jolie, who is holding an axe) approaches the tree at close range and THEN moves around it, not realizing he can actually circle the tree from a safe distance.

RichC2

Everything about that ending showdown was new levels of dumb