Jonah Hex: Review By J. David

More like what happened to this movie? Hasn't it been proven already that it's not that hard to take a DC comic and turn it into an entertaining experience? Apparently, it still is because Jonah Hex is one of the most poorly executed pieces of work I've seen this year. Haphazard plotting, forgettable characters, mish-mashed action scenes, and Razzie worthy direction plague this sad excuse for a blockbuster from start to finish. 81 minutes have never felt so long.

The premise is simple. Or is it? It involves a former Civil War soldier planning revenge on the man that took his family and disfigured his face, but the man, Quentin Turnbull, is killed before Jonah Hex can reach him so he decides to become a bounty hunter. And then Turnbull is alive, Jonah Hex can talk to the dead, Megan Fox shows up, and there's something about this ultimate weapon of destruction. With me so far? No? Don't worry; I'm just as lost as you are.

If Jonah Hex has anything going for it, it's Jonah Hex. Josh Brolin is perfectly suited for the title role. He injects the character with a raw grittiness that's just the right dose and delivers each line of dialogue with fierce intimidation. Sadly, the rest of the gang doesn't fare so well. Megan Fox, despite a credible southern accent, comes off as nothing more than eye candy. Not really surprising considering she only has about ten minutes of screen time and plays a prostitute. John Malkovich seems content to simply read his lines in a by-the-numbers fashion and rewards us with the least menacing villain since John Travolta in Battlefield Earth. The rest of the supporting characters: Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender, and Jeffery Dean Morgan, all reduced to little more than cameos, are terribly miscast. Not one of them seems to be working for anymore than a quick buck.

Director Jimmy Hayward seems to have absolutely no passion for his debut live-action project. He strings together scene after scene with hardly any continuity for the most part. Nothing in the movie makes any sense, not for a second. How did Jonah get his supernatural powers? How did Turnbull fake his death? Who exactly is Lilah? And where did the poison snake man come from? There are so many plot holes if you had to walk across the movie, you would fall into one before taking two steps.

The action sequences are so poorly edited together that we hardly ever see someone get punched, shot, stabbed, etc. I have heard a rumor that the film was originally done as a hard R action picture that was cut down to PG-13 at the last minute. The cuts resulted in a 60-minute runtime, so 20 minutes of the cutting room floor was re-inserted to make it longer. It would make sense if that were in fact the case and would explain the atrocious action sequences and jumpy story line. The CGI is good, I'll give the movie that, but it offers almost nothing else.

Brolin gives it his all, but it's not nearly enough to make up for the hole-ridden plot, misplaced supporting cast, and haphazard direction. All of which drag the film deep below the surface all too quickly. In the hands of a different director and with an R rating, this could have at least been an enjoyable, albeit forgettable, revenge thriller. Instead, we're left with a colossal mess of a picture that ranks with the very worst of 2010. My advice: skip this one, unless for some reason you are unusually drawn to it, and then skip it anyway.