Review #670: 'Jonah Hex' (2010)

Jonah Hex is a project that seemed doomed from the start. It has all the ingredients for a great movie - a too-cool-to-be-true premise, an extraordinary cast, a rarely seen (in the comic book universe) Wild West setting, and a cult following thanks to DC Comics' graphic novels. But if you look at other movies of its kind - Constantine (2005), Ghost Rider (2007) etc. - it was never going to work. The studio system or just plain bad writing always seems to get in the way. And Jonah Hex is quite possibly the most terrible of them all. Josh Brolin snarls and grunts his way through a solid performance, but he does not manage to save this absolute mess of a movie.

Jonah Hex served as a Confederate solider during the American Civil War. We learn through a fast-tracking prologue that shortly after the war, the evil Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) murdered Jonah's entire family, and branded his face with a terrible wound that leaves him disfigured. He is left for dead but nursed back to health by some native Americans, that somehow leave him with the ability to talk to the dead. Believing Turnbull burned to a crisp in a hotel fire, Jonah turns to bounty hunting to earn his living, proving highly efficient at the job. But when Turnbull re-emerges with his mad Irish cronie Burke (Michael Fassbender) and the threat of a terrorist attack, President Grant (Aidan Quinn) hires Jonah to take him out and save the day.

After the quick-fire introduction that zips through Jonah Hex's backstory so fast that you simply cannot care about him, we are introduced to the familiar hooker-with-a-heart Lilah (Megan Fox), who is inexplicably in love with Jonah. They share one scene together with no hint as to why these two characters even like each other (although I'm sure I know why Jonah enjoys visiting Lilah), and are not reunited until the climax when we are expected to give a damn about these two making it through the explosions and gunfire. Writers Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine (who like to refer to themselves as simply Taylor/Neveldine - oh, please) don't seem to have heard of character-building or pacing, but when you look at their back catalogue then this can hardly be a surprise.

The most depressing thing is that the actors do their best and are largely successful with their cardboard characters, which makes it even more confusing as to how this was screwed up so badly. Nothing is explained properly - how did Turnbull escape the fire that apparently killed him/why do we only see Jonah revive the dead twice/why is Turnbull so pissed at the government? - and the fact that we are simply expected to accept this is offensive. I know, I know, this is a comic-book movie, but the action is so dull and ridiculous (dynamite guns!) that the aspect that we expect to be at least not bad is not there in order for us to forgive its many flaws. If there's one good thing to say about the film, it's that Jonah Hex's prosthetics are good, but the fact that I'm praising the make-up department shows how badly I'm clutching at straws.


Directed by: Jimmy Hayward
Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, Wes Bentley, Aidan Quinn
Country: USA

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie