Jonah Hex Isn't The Only Thing Ugly About This Movie
(Approaches Hex with a knife)
Bar Patron: Hey Hex, what happened to your face?
(Hex shoots the man)
Jonah Hex: Cut myself shavin'. What happened to yours?
A big sloppy mess of a film, dumped into theaters, featuring a varied cast of bland characters, a boring plot, meh action, and hilariously bad dialogue, all crammed into a short running time of 80 minutes (including the credits).
Josh Brolin stars as Jonah Hex, a western bounty hunter, with a nasty scar on the right side of his face. The scar was put there by Hex's archnemesis Quentin Turnbull, played by a very shaggy John Malkovich (this time so evil that he can sit by and drink a glass of lemonade as he uses his super canon of death to level an entire town). Turnbull gave Hex his scar because Hex betrayed Turnbull and killed his family. Turnbull returned the favor, but left Hex alive. Somehow, possibly due to "injins" Hex became blessed with some special powers allowing him to communicate with the dead and remain one of the gruffest, disfigured bounty hunters around.
Lieutenant Grass: My unit is the very best.
The plot thickens as Turnbull and his number one henchman Burke, played by indie film go-to actor Michael Fassbender, steal the materials necessary to build a super weapon, which they plan to use to take out the capital on the centennial for some reason...maybe to take over the country, I guess. For some reason, the government decides to enlist Jonah Hex as the main man for taking down Turnbull, which helps since Hex has a score to settle anyway.
And Megan Fox co-stars as a whore.
Originally scripted and supposed to have been directed by the duo - Neveldine/Taylor, the ones responsible for the Crank films, differences with the studio caused them to leave the project, and what we have gotten is a hastily assembled film that is a mix of what was salvageable, resulting in a big messy film that lacks any sort of depth. Everything plays much worse than it could because the whole film is hollow. There are no characters here, just actors in costumes delivering terrible dialogue. The action follows the common standard of most modern action films, meaning that it is filmed to closely and thus ineffective. The look of the film in general seems to have had some ideas in terms of its use of color, but no real consistency leaves much to be desired.
Based on a lesser known DC comic character, Brolin does what he can, but this will sadly not be his breakout into blockbuster stardom. Malkovich has his mouth full with scenery. Fassbender chose the wrong big budget movie to try and expand his presence in. Lots of other stars come and go in a film that clearly excised much of the material the supporting cast was supposed to be involved in.
And Megan Fox plays a convincing whore.
Now, despite this being a horrible movie, I can't say it was Spirit bad in terms of how watchable it is. In The Spirit, I badly wanted to just walk out of the theater, here, the film is at least laughable at best, and certainly has the capacity to be enjoyed for how poorly done it is.
So yeah, this was a pretty bad movie, although I wouldn't say I regretted my time here; I just hope Brolin has a chance to succeed in a different "big" film down the road.
Henchman: What happened to your fa...
(Hex throws an axe at the man)
Jonah Hex: I'm all out of wise-ass remarks.
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