STACK #202 Aug 2021

FILM FEATURE

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lot of intensity and colour to this film. “It’s a tough role, so if you get a kid that’s too young and too emotional, who can’t handle me, as Hannah, messing with him and swearing at him and pushing him, then it’s brutal. Everything that we do to him in the course of the film would be too much. “On the other hand,” she continues, “if you get a kid who’s too confident or cool or cocky or polished, it’s not as emotional for the audience. Finn was right in the middle, and he just walked in and that was it. “Finn is a very robust child and he can access his emotions. It’s clear that he’s going to have a career, he is so professional. I think people will really respond to him in this film and feel for him and care about his character.” While Little’s Connor is traumatised

STACK caught up with the stars of the blazing new action-thriller ThoseWhoWish Me Dead , Angelina Jolie and Finn Little. Words Gill Pringle

A t the age of 15, Brisbane actor Finn Little has already chalked up a fair share of celebrity co-stars after making his film debut three years earlier alongside Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush and Jai Courtney in the Storm Boy remake. However, starring opposite Angelina Jolie in Taylor Sheridan’s tense action-thriller, Those Who Wish Me Dead , was something else altogether. Sharing most of his scenes with Jolie, Little wasn’t sure what to expect when he

immediately get into her role of Hannah, who is a very different person. Hannah is not a motherly figure,” he says of Jolie’s character, a highly-skilled “smokejumper”, still haunted by her failure to save three lives from a fire. No stranger to the action- thriller genre with her roles in Salt , Wanted and Mr & Mrs Smith , Jolie trained hard to play this elite firefighter. Often thought of as the “special forces” of firefighting, smokejumpers are specially trained wildland firefighters who provide an initial attack response on remote wildland

• Those Who Wish Me Dead is out on Aug 11

by recent experiences, the actor relished the scenes of pure action. “We had some really great stunts with swimming and stuff. I loved every scene with Angelina and it just got more and more exciting. I think the most fun was jumping off the fire tower. The stuntmen built this massive rig and I jumped on top of her and we slid down this rope, which was a great thrill.” “My instinct with children is to listen,” says Jolie, “but Hannah doesn’t have any children and really doesn’t have any maternal instincts. She swears too much, she says inappropriate things; she’s perhaps the worst person to end up with a child. To put a person like that with a kid who needs her to save him… She has no faith in herself that she can do that, so throughout the film, she is forced to stay alive because of him. Connor and Hannah have to go through the fire, both emotionally and practically, if they have any chance of coming

flew to Montana to shoot this fast- paced flick about a boy on the run from relentless hitmen, trapped in a forest wildfire with nowhere to turn. But Jolie, herself a mum, immediately put him at ease. “I didn’t know what to expect but she’s actually really fun and humble and nice,”

fires. They are inserted at the site of the fire by parachute and, in addition to performing the initial attack on wildfires, often provide leadership for extended attacks on wildfires. Impressed by her young co-star, Jolie says, “Finn plays Connor, the kid at the centre of our film, who is traumatised and alone

Little tells STACK from his home in Brisbane. “She’s a great screen partner and we had some great times together.” If Jolie was like a

and ends up with Hannah. Connor and Hannah are a very strange pair. You put these two damaged

people together, with the sense of urgency as

mother to him on set then as soon as the cameras started rolling, it was very different. “She would

things happen, and that adds a

out the other side together. But Taylor [Sheridan] gave me significant direction to stop mothering and be tough,” she laughs.

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FURTHER VIEWING

18 AUGUST 2021

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