For every good comic book movie, there's a bundle of bad ones, and in every bundle there's one that's not just poor, but above-and-beyond incompetently made. Or nonsensical. Jonah Hex is both. Not many superhero movies manage to reach this level of spectacular awfulness. Catwoman, The Spirit... These are movies you take one look at and frown in wonder as to how they escaped into theaters.
The fact that Jonah Hex is among those ranks makes it all the funnier that it has a truly impressive cast. Well, funny or depressing, you take your pick.
Josh Brolin takes the lead as Jonah Hex, a scarred gunslinger who's recruited by President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn) to stop villain Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), who has stolen a sci-fi weapon of mass destruction and plans to attack the Union during the centennial. Megan Fox is Lilah, a prostitute who's established as cold, tough and capable of taking care of herself—except when Hex is around. Then she gets all weak-kneed for him and easily subdued by Turnbull or his crazy Irish henchman (Michael Fassbender). Also appearing in small, mostly useless and basically cameo roles are: Will Arnett in a non-comedic role, Wes Bentley, Lance Reddick, an uncredited Jeffrey Dean Morgan and a bizarre two-second appearance by fifth-billed cast member Michael Shannon (more on this later).
What ultimately kills this movie is the unwillingness to actually be a western, which is what it's obviously supposed to be. It has apparently determined that since it's a comic book character, the movie has to be as stereotypically comic booky as possible, including giving Hex a superpower, something he never possessed in the comics. Echoes of Barry Sonnenfeld's steampunk junk Wild Wild West here as the honor-bound bounty hunter is now a supernatural government agent riding a Gatling gun-equipped horse (???), resurrecting dead people and saving America from a supervillain's doomsday machine.
Instead of the rich history of Hex's scar being the result of breaking a Native American tribe's sacred rules and being seared with what they call "The Mark of the Demon," Hex's background is simply that his wife and kid were murdered by Turnbull, who then branded his face with his initials, turning Hex's quest into a predictable revenge story. In the film's dumbest but most telling moment, President Grant gives Hex a badge to become "Sheriff of the United States." Telling, because such a ridiculous title is actually fitting of the character in this messy context.
A comic book movie doesn't always need to stay faithful to its source material. Some changes are necessary for believability purposes and some changes just work for the better, say, if the comic version is deemed too derivative. The Jonah Hex movie, though, plays like it was conceived as an original story by people who have absolutely no familiarity to the comics at all, and then had the character names hastily swapped by a committee so they can slap the DC Comics banner on it.
If only they hadn't done that, then maybe... Well, okay, it would still be a thundering gaggle of crap with terrible sense of action (from the director of Horton Hears a Who!) and a poorly paced script (by Crank duo Neveldine & Taylor), but at least it wouldn't be called Jonah Hex.
DVD Bonus Features
There's no "Bonus Features" section, but there is a "Deleted Scenes" section. Seeing how short and jumpy the film is, it makes sense if there were moodier or more character-centric scenes cut out of it, but there's no evidence of that here; just more unnecessary subplots and detours. The highlight is Michael Shannon's unhinged turn as Doc Cross Williams, a voodoo ringmaster whose deleted conversation with Megan Fox is more entertaining than the actual movie.
Doc Cross was supposed to be a recurring character in a planned Jonah Hex trilogy, this being the set-up, hence why the Academy Award nominee stays on the bill despite being essentially cut out of the movie. Since Jonah Hex was a critical and box office disaster, there's probably no cause for concern that Shannon would have to do two more of this dreck.
"Jonah Hex" is on sale October 12, 2010 and is rated PG13. Action, Comic Book, Western. Directed by Jimmy Hayward. Written by Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor (story & screenplay) and William Farmer (story). Starring John Malkovich, Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon, Wes Bentley, Will Arnett.
