Apparently budget cutting and workforce reductions are a problem in the criminal world as well.

When Jack (Aidan Gillen) and Patrick (Nicholas Hoult) aren’t killing everyone in their path as they try to protect the secrets of their mysterious employer, they’re complaining that this should have been a two-crew job. And when the workers are stretched too thin, mistakes happen.

They could be a couple of guys in charge of cleaning a warehouse, instead of assassins hired to pull off hits of two targets who live several hours apart.

The unrealistic demands placed on hired killers isn’t the main focus of “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” but it’s one of the more distinctive elements in a well-made but rote thriller.

The initial plot is so superfluous, the movie doesn’t even bother to explain it — financial secrets that implicate politicians is as much detail as the screenplay provides. Instead, it’s the trigger for a story starring Angelina Jolie as an emotionally damaged firefighter given a chance at redemption by protecting an 11-year-old boy targeted by those killers.

The movie opens with Jack and Patrick killing a district attorney and his family (nicely underplayed and in sharp contrast to some of the carnage to follow) in Florida. But the publicity tips off the forensic attorney (Jake Weber) who uncovered the financial misdeeds, and he and his son Connor (Finn Little) flee for Montana, where his brother-in-law (Jon Bernthal) is a sheriff’s deputy.

Jack and Patrick kill the dad, but Connor survives the attack and is found by Jolie’s Hannah Faber, a thrill-seeking smokejumper assigned to fire tower duty as she deals with the aftermath of a blaze that killed co-workers and three children. Faber has to battle the hired killers — and the wildfire they set as a distraction — to keep Connor safe until he can share his father’s secrets.

The movie gives Jolie a chance to play against type. No, not as an action star. While it might not be the first thing she wants on her resume, the woman did star in “Tomb Raider.” But the actor well-known for adopting six children is playing a character with little or no maternal instincts. Her technique for entertaining a child who just watched his father riddled with bullets is to teach him tongue twisters that are impossible to say without sputtering obscenities.

There are a few moments when Jolie looks a little too much like a movie star to be wholly believable as a grizzled firefighter, but it’s hardly the least realistic detail in the movie.

Jolie and Medina Senghore, who plays Bernthal’s pregnant wife, give this action thriller a more female-centric focus than most action thrillers. The pregnant wife role usually exists to propel the husband to heroic or vengeful action. Senghore’s Allison runs a survival school. Even with a six-month baby bump, she’s as adept with weaponry as the men attacking her and far more comfortable in the wilderness.

Director / co-writer Taylor Sheridan, who adapted Michael Koryta’s novel along with Charles Leavitt, seems comfortable in this world. The early scenes focusing on the camaraderie of the smokejumpers quickly establish the risks and the relationships, and the forest fire sequences are intense and thrilling.

While “Those Who Wish Me Dead” will be available Friday on HBO Max, it’s also opening in theaters, which is where it was screened for the press. The fire scenes particularly were impressive on the big screen.

It felt good to be in a dark theater with a bag of popcorn. And “Those Who Wish Me Dead” is an adult popcorn movie that’s best not to think about too hard.