After attention-grabbing performances on TV’s “Sons of Anarchy” and “Veronica Mars,” Taylor Sheridan made a persuasive move to writing and direction, notching Oscar nods for his scripts on “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water,” then handily assuming both tasks for his 2017 masterpiece “Wind River.”

Having thereupon dubbed him “the go-to man for intelligent, lifelike, explosively exciting cinema,” I was naturally eager for Sheridan’s hot-looking new thriller, “Those Who Wish Me Dead.”

But while this is a competent and absorbing actioner, it doesn’t quite manage the visceral authenticity of the writer-director’s earlier work. It sure has a strong plot-hook, though!

Angelina Jolie plays Hannah Faber, a smoke-jumper struggling with guilt over several deaths that occurred during a recent wildfire she was in charge of fighting. Assigned to a lonely watchtower, Faber winds up protecting a pre-teen boy who has fled to the forest pursued by two vicious hitmen.

Played by Aidan Gillen and Nicholas Hoult, this pair has already killed the lad’s father, who had key evidence in a wide-ranging criminal investigation and has now passed this info on to his son.

And then, just as Hannah and Connor set out through the woods for help, Gillen’s character starts a fire that quickly roars out of control.

“Those Who Wish Me Dead” is distinguished by terrific camerawork, editing and photography; its action scenes really pop, and special effects involving the inferno are visually seamless.

Sheridan gets strong work in all four roles described above — with excellent additional support from Jake Weber as the pursued parent. Jon Bernthal plays a local sheriff who is Hannah’s former flame, and newcomer Medina Senghore appears as the officer’s intrepid wife.

But it’s here that the film stumbles a bit.

It’s almost like Sheridan didn’t have faith in his nifty hook and felt he had to keep throwing in additional crises to keep things moving. When Jolie gets felled by a lightning strike, and the six-months-pregnant wife hops on a horse with her deer rifle, I was thinking to myself, “Enough already! How ’bout a little less plot, and a little more attention to dialog, character and believability.”

In particular, I was bugged that an experienced fire-fighter would keep wincing and hissing when she put peroxide on her wounds (for that matter, I also couldn’t figure out how she hurt her foot). Even worse are a couple of climactic gunfights, in which logic and realism both go up in flames, as it were.

Yet the movie works. While we maintain some distance from the increasingly outlandish plotting, “Those” certainly holds attention, thanks largely to Jolie, who continues to prove a solid action star — and to young Finn Little, absolutely first-rate as the boy. Tyler Perry also makes an effective cameo as the killers’ boss.

So no one’s going to write Sheridan off as a result of this modestly successful thrill-ride; but he can do better.