Messy Jonah Hex Goes Dead Bang
Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin), a vengeful bounty hunter sporting a hideous facial scar and a tragic past thanks to the murderous Col. Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, has just been given an offer he cannot refuse. In exchange for stopping the madman he thought dead and was responsible for the death of his entire family from unleashing Hell on Earth, President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn) and the United States Government is prepared to issue him a pardon for all past crimes as well as a hefty reward.
Michael Fassbender and Josh Brolin in Jonah Hex © Warner Bros.
Not that they needed to even offer a reward or a pardon. Hex hates Turnbull so wholly he’d have taken on this particular bounty for free.
Based on the DC Comic Books character created by John Albano and Tony Dezuniga, Jonah Hex is a quickly paced, overly frenetic nonsensical mess that doesn’t make even a single attempt at trying to make sense. The script from Crank auteurs Neveldine and Taylor is as nasty and as harried as they were in their previous Jason Statham starring R-rated thrillers, the two playing up the title character’s antiheroic tendencies to the nth degree.
I’ll be frank, this isn’t a very good movie, and the only thing keeping it from joining Wild Wild West on the list of modern day Western disasters is the dual presence of Josh Brolin and Michael Fassbender as well as the screenplay’s tendency to keep its tongue so firmly planted in cheek it made me laugh more often than not. You get the feeling director Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who!) was going for an Escape from New York sort of feel here, and as silly as it all ends up being as fan of that 1981 John Carpenter classic I can’t say I didn’t respect the attempt even if the final effort comes up more than a little bit short.
But not for the lack of effort on Brolin and Fassbender’s parts. The two actors have a field day with this, the former a gun-slinging Snake Plisken wannabe that’s as great a character the Oscar nominated actor has ever gotten the chance to play. The script may keep him strictly one dimensional but that doesn’t mean Brolin still doesn’t have a field day filling the antihero’s cowboy boots. His series of one liners, facial expressions (even with the impressive makeup making one side of his face virtually unusable) and body movements are truly top notch, and as dumb as this film is if they ever made a sequel I imagine I’d still be curious to see it if only because of him.
As for Fassbender, star of Neil Marshall’s upcoming (and highly entertaining) Roman vs. Pict B-movie adventure Centurion, his restless performance is so jittery and jazzed he manages to steal the whole movie right out from under the feet of his more well known costars. Playing Turnbull’s go-to goon Burke, the guy is all motion and mayhem, and when he and Hex finally cross paths for the final time an itsy bitsy part of me actually kind of wished his villainous henchman would ultimately come out on top.
Does any of this mean Jonah Hex is actually any good or worthy of even a matinee ticket? Not on your life. This movie is dumb with a capitol D, Neveldine and Taylor’s script basically making things up as it goes along. While the majority of the cast isn’t remotely terrible (and that includes Megan Fox, who’s not around as much as the trailers suggest) they’re given so little to do they might as well as be cardboard cutouts of actors instead of the actual flesh and blood thing. At just under 90-minutes this is still something of a tough slog, and as much as I enjoyed Brolin, Fassbender and the occasional bit here and there as a whole this is one picture that’s shot so full of holes it’s dead and buried long before the climax.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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