Jonah Hex reviews

http://antidisartsandent.blogspot.com/2010/07/jonah-hex.html

Monday, July 5, 2010
Jonah Hex
Jonah Hex
Grade: C
Cast: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Free Admission Granted

The comic book is to this age what shoot-em-up Westerns were to an older time – an outlet for children’s heroic fantasies. So perhaps Jonah Hex – a combination of the two – was inevitable.

This DC Comics Western slyly refers to this fact, as a frontier father watches his son read an illustrated Western storybook by candlelight. The father tells him it isn’t highest literary material. He can feel his son’s brain turning to mush.

The father is Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin), who witnesses his son and wife burned to death in their cabin as revenge for a Civil War betrayal. Driven by a need to avenge his family, Hex turns into a deadly bounty hunter after the war, with a bullet hole in his right cheek for his trouble. His arch-rival, Southern general Quentin Trumbull (John Malkovich), falsely believed dead, plots to re-start the Civil War with a top-secret super-cannon. The government hires Hex to track him down. (Did I mention that Jonah Hex walks with the animals and talks with the animals, too? Not to mention his habit of speaking to recent corpses.)

Directed by Jimmy Hayward, whose background is in animation, Jonah Hex attempts a stylized version of a Clint Eastwood Western – anti-heroic violence mixed with a self-indicting moral indifference. But what starts as intriguing ode unravels into mere aping. Brolin’s leathery performance slowly slips from homage to mimicry.

The film has all of the trademarks of the DC Comics brand for lesser known comics. A lesser-level star (Josh Brolin). A starlet (Megan Fox) who can handle action. A revenge story. A bright-crayola War on Terror metaphor. Thrown into this formula is Tom Wopat. It’s always good to see one of the Duke boys getting in on the action. Too bad this Civil War film had no role for General Lee.

Another trademark of DC Comics films – the set-ups raise expectations that the resolutions rarely meet. Jonah Hex wears down from a buyable premise to a yawn of an action ending. If you can stand the violence, there are amusing parts along the way before it sticks its foot in its grave.
Posted by K. Bowen at 1:16 PM

http://deep.mastersfamily.org/2010-07-04/jonah-hex-a-movie-review/

Jonah Hex – A Movie Review

By John on Jul 4, 2010 filed in Culture, Movies

Jonah Hex is a scarred drifter and bounty hunter of last resort, a tough and stoic gunslinger who can track down anyone… and anything. Having survived death, Jonah’s violent history is steeped in myth and legend, and has left him with one foot in the natural world and one on the “other side.” His only human connection is with Lila, whose life in a brothel has left her with scars of her own. Jonah’s past is about to catch up with him when the U.S. military makes him an offer he can’t refuse: in exchange for his freedom from the warrants on his head, he must track down and stop the dangerous terrorist Quentin Turnbull. But Turnbull, who is gathering an army and preparing to unleash Hell, is also Jonah’s oldest enemy and will stop at nothing until Jonah is dead.

Genres: Action/Adventure, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Western and Adaptation; Running Time: 84 min.; Release Date: June 18th, 2010 (wide); MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images and sexual content.

Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Micheal Shannon

Directed By: Jimmy Hayward

Lay was most interested in seeing this movie, so we went last weekend.

If you’re prone to make jokes that you lose interest in a movie if something isn’t blown up in the first five minutes of whatever they’re watching?, Well, you have any problems with the opening of Jonah Hex. There are two huge explosions, a shootout, and a robbery in the first fifteen minutes of the film.

Before I go any further, let me be the first to point out that I didn’t read the Jonah Hex comics. So this is purely from a moviegoer’s standpoint. Jonah Hex is so focused on getting revenge for his family that he’s really kind of boring other than the occasional wise remark . He can apparently talk to dead people, which is kind of interesting. Animals tend to have a thing for him, too; horses, dogs, a huge murder of crows.

Megan Fox brings mostly eye candy to her role as a promiscuous woman who has a soft spot for Jonah Hex and has a decent action scene towards the end of the film, but adds little to her repertoire as far as acting goes. John Malkovich as the main villain supports that theory, but his character is also pretty dull. He lost the thing he loved most in this world thanks to Jonah Hex and the military, so he’s decided to kill innocent bystanders and destroy the United States.

If you ever saw (and enjoyed) the old Wild West TV show or movie, you’ll probably like Jonah Hex. They sure seemed to have a lot of really neat technology back in those days. I enjoyed the movie. It’s not going to be up for for any Oscars, but it’s worth renting.

http://www.holmansmoviereview.com/2010/07/what-hex-am-i-watching.html

What The "Hex" Am I Watching?
Mini-Movie Review: Jonah Hex (2010)

Josh Brolin and John Malkovich star in Jonah Hex, a revenge/action thriller that takes place during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.

A formidable army veteran-turned-terrorist, Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich) has lost his way. In his plot to destabilize the young United States through incendiary, secretive government technology, the only worthy opponent is one man, Jonah Hex (Brolin), who stands able and ready to oppose him.

The scarred-for-life, hungry-for-vengeance vigilante killer with a cryptic necromantic gift is offered a clean record in exchange for taking down Turnbull, and thus, securing the nation. Hex's close brush with death bestows upon him the ability to make contact with the damned in the spirit world and “pump” them for information.

The original Hex character storyline in the comics may have done well at churning up fears of contacting the impudent dead as they await roasting, in fear of approaching hellhounds, in the curious setting of a slightly techno-fied version of the old west. But the movie is an un-energized and one-dimensional bore that itself gets closer to the flat-line right to the end.

While none of the performances are to be repudiated on their merits, not a single one stands out as convincing, not even an always-gorgeous Megan Fox as Hex's confidant, Lilah. The amazing John Malkovich himself fails to bring home the focused fanaticism that Turnbull is supposed to exhibit. We're not dealing with that disturbed Mitch Leary that we remember from In The Line of Fire (1993), who made it his mission to get back at the government by assassinating the president.

And while Brolin may not quite have the flare of Eastwood in his cowboy days, he also didn't have a foundation on which to build it. The too-straightforward story lacks build-up, but when it would almost start to appeal in its simplicity, it begins to lag in the tendency to drift off into light cliché-dom:

“Please, let the innocent go.”
“There are no innocents.”


And it looks like there may not be any happy viewers, either; at least, not very many.

Based off of the cryptic DC comic book character, Jonah Hex the movie is a “dead” resurrection of a flawed hero nobody cares for or looks forward to seeing, making it – on the face of it – a pointless put-together that, frankly, amounts to a near waste of film.

(JH)

---

Grade: D- (1 star)
Rated: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images and sexual content)
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Summary: The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth.
Starring: Josh Brolin "Jonah Hex," John Malkovich "Quentin Turnbull," Megan Fox "Lilah," Michael Fassbender "Burke," Will Arnett "Lieutenant Grass"
Genre: Action / Drama / Thriller / Western

http://zonalibre-magna.blogspot.com/2010/07/weekly-update.html

Jonah Hex

Directed by Jimmy Hayward

So what do you expect from a film by the director ofHorton Hears a Who and the writers of Crash 1, 2, and Gamer? It’s what you think it is: horrible.

The film does remain faithful in terms of characterization.Jonah Hex is a miserable and apathetic bastard but the rest of the film is almost insulting. He is now able to talk to the dead and the tone miserably straddles the line between serious and absurd. The mistake is that it never decides if it wants to be taken seriously or not. Josh Brolin liked it because it was like Grindhouse but the result is a watered down and riskless film. The plot essentially rips off Wild Wild West as The President hires Jonah Hex to take down the terrorist plot of Quinton Turnbull, who wishes to destroy the newly founded union with a massive weapon (don’t worry no mechanical spiders). Why the president hires a bounty hunter to take down a league of terrorist is anyone’s guess.

Josh Brolin does what he can with the role and Megan Fox’s role mainly consists of looking pretty and acting tough. Of course John Malkovich is underutilized and his performance lacks any real life or ambition. Michael Fassbender (of Inglourious Basterds fame and future Magneto) steals the film as the insane henchmen Burke. Fassbender’s unhinged performance remains one of the more enjoyable elements of the film. I really feel like he could’ve been a great Joker. Fans of Will Arnett will be disappointed by his two expositional and wasted scenes.

The film is 81 minutes long and it cheats the audience of any understanding of the film. The character of Quinton Turnbull is said to be dead but he reappears without explaining how he faked his death or why. There’s no explanation for Hex’s powers, what powers Turnbull’s bombs (I would’ve liked a phony scientific reason at least), or why there’s a circus Snake Man with real venom. The film’s pace is quick, like the heavy metal soundtrack that curiously scores the film, but it paces way past the audience’s willingness to take in an absurd spectacle as this. The film makes you scratch your head and wondering how this film got made in the first place. The most absurd point in the film is the climax, where Hex and Turnbull face off which is also cross cut with scenes of Hex’s dream/hallucination of fighting Turnbull.

The film makes it clear that they did read Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s wonderful Jonah Hex series with small things like his scarring and ties to Native Americans but the changes are almost insulting, the fact that Megan Fox’s character is Tallulah Black (one of their best original characters) is appalling. They basically took the best things from the source but without its substance.

Verdict - Avoid It. Do yourself a favor, rent Wild Wild West you’re not missing anything from this movie. Even better yet, pick up the Jonah Hex trades (the first three are Must Buys: Face Full of Violence, Guns of Vengeance, and Origins) from Jimmy Palmiotti andJustin Gray, especially the original graphic novel, Jonah Hex: No Way Back. This graphic novel is like the trade series; absolutely beautiful and befitting of the amoral and cynical landscape of the west, rivaling the best Sergio Leone films.

http://artfullybedraggledfilmreviews.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/jonah-hex/


Jonah Hex

Title: Jonah Hex
Year: 2010
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Writers: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, from on a story by themselves and William Farmer, based on the characters by John Albano and Tony Dezuniga
Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon
MPAA Rating: PG-13, intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images and sexual content
Runtime: 81 min
Major Awards: -
IMDb Rating: 4.2
Rotten Tomatoes: 13%

Josh Brolin, John Malkovic, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett and Michael Shannon are all actors I like and respect, put them in a movie together from a comic book I quite like and you would guess that the film would appeal immensely to me, but in comes Megan Fox and it turns out to be one of the worst films I’ve seen all year. I mean, it’s obviously not all Megan Fox’s fault, god knows I don’t really like her at all and I do maintain my position that she’s part of the reason why Jonah Hex sucked, but pretty much everyone was just as bad as her, or maybe only a bit better which is still saying a lot, plus the writers are the ones that gave us Gamer last year, another completely sh*#&% film.

Josh Brolin is a tremendous actor, and I actually think he really tried to make this one work, there are glimpses of good acting in his performance as the titular anti-hero, but that’s the thing, they are just glimpses, because every now and again someone who was bad came along and f&%$#& it up, and because the movie is way too short, I mean, it’s good that it’s this short because it puts us out of our misery quickly when watching it, but maybe by making it longer they could have squeezed more juice from a story that has a rich source material.

Jonah Hex is a man who was made by Quentin Turnbull, who’s played by Mr. Malkovich, watch as a house containing his family was set fire, and was then branded by him, which left his face severely scarred, and Jonah Hex is now, as you might have guessed, out for vengeance. There’s also Lilah, the local hooker who is the character played by Ms. Fox, with whom he’s in love, and to be frank Lilah is a character we could have done without, but the studio probably thought that having Ms. Fox as a hooker constantly in a corset would get all the horny non-picky males to the theatre which would translate to cash, but then again, this film had a budget of nearly $50 million and has only made about $10 million so far, over a month after its release, which means, I hope, that the Megan Fox mania is starting to die down, a process that I hope will be completed when the new Transformers film is out and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley replaces her as the designated hottie, finally someone who’s actually hot.

I don’t want to go through the rest of the plot, suffice it to say that it’s really bad, full of performances that are horrendous, and which are led by the waxy performance from Ms. Fox, and that dull out the respectable one by Mr. Brolin who tried his best but ultimately was dragged down by a sh*#&% storyline that couldn’t have been saved by anyone. I may be angrier than I should, but I like DC Comics, I like them pretty much just as much as I like Marvel, and they deserve at least a bit of success out of the Batman franchise, now, if they f&#! up the upcoming Green Lantern film then I will seriously lose it, considering he’s my favorite superhero and all.

Grade: D

http://letoffsomesteambennett-jonahhex.blogspot.com/2010/08/jonah-hex.html

Saturday, August 7, 2010
Jonah Hex


Jonah Hex 2010
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Writers: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor
Starring Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, John Gallagher Jr., Tom Wopat, Michael Shannon, Wes Bentley, Aidan Quinn and Julia Jones

I am a self avowed comic book geek and one of my all time favorite characters is Jonah Hex. And a film on the character is something I never thought I would see in my lifetime. This film came close to being a great comic book film, the main thing that sent it back is the horrible performance by Megan Fox. Josh Brolin really embodies Hex and is magnetic to watch any time he is onscreen. It is just the screechingly bad performance of Fox that holds it back. The casting people and the costume designers must never have seen a prostitute in other western films because they never look that good and polished. They usually look used up. Another problem is a lot of the story elements seem borrowed from other films like The Legend of the Lone Ranger and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is a shame because I love the character of Hex so much and he gets relegated to a B movie.

The plot basics are this, Jonah Hex (Brolin) is a Lt. in Confederate army and decides to not go ahead and do an act and ends up having to kill his best friend. This enrages his father and his superior, Colonel Turnbull (Malkovich) and he enacts a revenge on Hex by torching his family and scarring his face for life. Hex then becomes a bounty hunter and searches the West for scum to bring down. It seems now though, that Turnbull plans on terrorizing the Union with a special weapon and the President (Quinn) asls for Hex’s aid in stopping Turnbull. Hex agrees so he can get his revenge on Turnbull and damn anyone who gets in his way.

This film has many good elements but somehow falls flat. The direction by Hayward is good. He sets up and pulls off the action sequences. I especially liked the Gatling gun scene which took me back to Django. He tried his best with the Fox character scenes but they just fell flat. The script has some decent elements but also cribs its ideas from other better films. The very ending seems like a carbon copy of the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The cast has its good and bad parts. Brolin really embodies Jonah Hex. He is magnetic every time he takes over the screen. Malkovich really overacts but it really fits the role. Fox on the other hand is just horrible. It is like she is reading her lines like she is reading a report. Quinn was also good as President Grant and I also like Wes Bentley as the conniving Lusk. The SFX and action sequences were done quite well. They really pulled off the look of Hex’s visage very well. Another thing I really dug was the animated sequence in the beginning of the film. The score is very dynamic and fitting for a Western film and really sets the tone for the film. This is a decent comic book film, with some glaring issues that keep it from achieving a great status. I would recommend it to both Western and comic fans though.
This one gets 3 out of 5

http://blindmoney.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/film-review-jonah-hex/

Film Review–Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex
directed by Jimmy Hayward
written by Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
starring Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, John Gallagher Jr., Tom Wopat, Michael Shannon

Employing a non-descript, Soulless backdrop to articulate its tale of Revenge, this film offers little in a sense of nourishment and settles for an exceedingly generic, safe adaptation of the Comic book created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga and published by D. C. Comics.

There very well could have been a terrific haunting quality to this film as the potential for a great, dark fable is readily apparent. Unfortunately the film’s creators decided to pursue an easier, sanitized version of the comic which results in a disappointment that nevertheless contains several intriguing ideas that are left to die in the dust.

Essentially this is a story of two men and their seething hatred for each other, a hatred that seemingly knows no limits. The film takes place during the American Civil War and we gradually learn that Jonah Hex (Brolin), a former Confederate Soldier, has switched his allegiance by refusing to follow a direct order by his Commanding Officer Quentin Turnbill (Malkovich) to destroy a hospital which leads to Jonah killing Turnbill’s son Jeb (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). In turn Officer Turnbill burns down Jonah’s house with his wife and son inside and brands Jonah’s cheek with his initials while crucifying him and leaving him to die. Jonah is rescued by Native Americans and given the gift of communicating with the dead.

Officer Turnbill represents the anger and vengeful spirit of the Confederacy and a hatred for the United States government which he considers illegitimate. This animosity drives Turnbill to annihilate the Capital in a mad attempt to seize power. It isn’t entirely too difficult to sympathize with his position if one considers the plight of the South to be one of undeserved derision and contempt from the Self-righteous North with its abolitionists and coarse egalitarianism.

The cliched whore with the heart of gold is presented in the luscious form of Lilah (Fox) who demonstrates not only an appreciation of the finer aspects of mere Sex but also a keen sharpness with firearms. She is able to defend herself against attackers and naturally Fox looks positively exquisite doing so. Much has been said to deride her cinematic exploits mostly from dull and exceedingly ugly people who are terrified of such an intoxicating personage as Ms. Fox. An entire article could be written about this character although she is only on screen for about ten to twelve minutes. Suffice to say the sex is well received and it provides male audience members with a reason to stay awake during the mostly drab and unimaginative scenes throughout the rest of the film. Fox wears a corset that reduces her already scant waist to an absurd 18 inches. One wonders after the necessity of such a maneuver. It’s not like she would be less hot with a normal sized waist. Regardless she toughs it out and once one is confronted with said waist one recognizes it as a badge of honor for Ms. Fox, something of a grand achievement that has a life of its own that will exist long after the film is forgotten.

Tiny waistlines aside, the rest of the film is merely built around the confrontation between Jonah and Officer Turnbill. Jonah is hired by the U.S. Government to bring in or kill Turnbill and he pursues his prey with skill and courage. There is no doubt that Jonah is a tough nutter who seems not to fear anything especially death. He starts off as an antihero and an Outsider but once he begins working for the man he’s just a garden variety greedy bastard clearing his name and seeking his reward.

Overall, this film does introduce intriguing elements such as Jonah’s connection to the dead but they aren’t effectively explored. Still it is quite enjoyable to watch him bring the dead briefly to life and interrogate them but these moments do not possess enough potency on their own to carry the whole film. The performances are of course top notch as the principle actors bring their characters sizzling to life but they are abandoned in a Spiritual wasteland due to a paucity of ideas in the script. What might have been a dark, gritty exploration into the nature of Revenge is just a quiet, uneventful and polite exercise in wasted film. In an attempt to please everyone the film ends up pleasing no one.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/theticket/2010/0903/1224278075315.html

The Irish Times - Friday, September 3, 2010

3/5

Directed by James Hayward. Starring Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Wes Bentley, Tom Wopat, Aidan Quinn 15A cert, gen release, 81 mins
Jonah Hex

Directed by James Hayward. Starring Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Wes Bentley, Tom Wopat, Aidan Quinn 15A cert, gen release, 81 mins
In this section »

TARA BRADY

FAST, CHEAP and out of control, Horton Hears a Who (!) director James Hayward brings DC Comics’ ultraviolent western antihero to the big screen with all the nuances we might have expected from a film featuring Megan Fox as a frontier brothel madam. The chaotic results will provide temporary relief for genre fans who simply can’t wait for Ivan Kavanagh’s Where We’ll Never Grow Old . Mostly, however, Jonah Hex feels more like a post-Red Dead Redemption movie rather than a post-Peckinpah one.

Throughout, to be fair, the muddled plot offers plenty of enjoyably ludicrous incidents. The maimed Jonah (Josh Brolin) sees his family die at the hands of his former Confederate general Quentin Turnball (John Malkovich) but is nursed back to health by Indians who, characteristically for movie injuns, endow their charge with superpowers. Jonah must now roam the earth as a scarred bounty hunter with a lot of bad mak-up and a talent for communing with the dead.

Soon enough (the story gets a bit jumpy here) he is dispatched by President Ulysses S Grant (Aidan Quinn) to track down arch-nemesis Turnball before the disgruntled villain launches steampunk weapons of mass destruction at the forthcoming US centennial celebrations.

Featuring what looks like a compromised length (81 minutes including anime inserts?), this post-Civil War fantasy is not without its pleasures. There’s a good meta-joke in the similarities between Brolin’s performance as a marauding pale rider psychopath and Josh Brolin’s performance as George W Bush in Oliver Stone’s underrated W. And Michael Fassbender, channelling Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange , deserves a Stalin-sized statue for is work as Malkovich’s demented, tattooed Irish sidekick.

Too often, however, Jonah Hex trips on its own determination to be down with the kids. The Mastadon soundtrack, far from being innovative, recalls Tommy Lee’s work on Pamela Anderson’s Barb Wire . The animated segments, though stylish, look rushed. The allusions to the “War on Terror” couldn’t feel more hackneyed.

Specialised audiences may appreciate how gloriously trashy it is, but mainstream punters are unlikely to connect with Jonah Hex’s flair for unnecessary quotation and all those empty, empty signifiers.

http://thefilmblogger.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/reviewed-jonah-hex/

REVIEWED: JONAH HEX

September 4, 2010 by Shaun Munro

Hex's face is not the ugliest thing about this film.

It isn’t surprising that given its critical pasting from U.S. critics, and its diabolical box office therein – garnering a pitiful $10.5m against a $47m budget thus far – that you’ll be hard-pressed to find a cinema playing Jonah Hex this weekend. Fox, it appears, as with their recent critical and commercial disappointment Cop Out, have hastily thrown prints of the film into a few select cinemas, perhaps hoping to recoup losses from a few bored cinemagoers who take a chance upon it. Thankfully, though, an advertising campaign consisting of practically nothing should keep even the most easily entertained audiences away from this cynical dud of a film.

Taking place during the American Civil War, the titular protagonist (Josh Brolin) is a former Confederate soldier, who fought under Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). However, Hex’s refusal to destroy a hospital sees him outcast, for in the practise of protecting it, he causes the death of Turnbull’s son. In revenge, Turnbull burns Hex’s home down, killing both his wife and young son, and also brands his face, causing it to become horribly scarred and disfigured. Rejuvenated and now oddly imbued with Native American powers to communicate with the dead, Hex, after hearing that Turnbull is still alive despite humours of his demise, goes on the hunt to settle his score once and for all.

One might wonder how exactly a brainless film about cowboys featuring lots of explosions can in any way be “cynical”. The film’s 81-minute runtime – which is actually closer to 70 without the credits – speaks volumes, if not that the product itself, featuring choppy editing and a virtually charmless narrative flow, is so sloppily minimalistic that it’s astounding that any executive would sign off on its release. It is evidently a gutted, chopped down version of a mediocre film, rather than an outright dire one, and it is difficult to believe that any unconstituted footage could make the film any more incoherent.

Pretty much the only thing that goes according to plan is the acting. Well, that and the fact that Hex’s horse sports a massive gatling gun, but, oddly, it gets only a few seconds of action (at least in the footage that made it to the screen). Brolin and a strangely distinguished cast, including the aforementioned Malkovich – who hams it up and really seems to get it – along with Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, Wes Bentley, Tom Wopat and The Wire‘s Lance Reddick give the pulp a good run, but when their efforts are disrespected so thoroughly, it’s no surprise that their work does little good. Unfairly criticised for her performance here and for her work in general, Megan Fox is at least well-cast as prostitute Lilah. A sex scene might have livened things up, yet as she cosies up to Hex, we get a fade to black instead, despite the 15-rating (though it recieved a meeker PG-13 in America).

The torturously poor editing job is apparent from the opening scenes, detailing what appears to be a lengthy back story in all of several minutes, pacing the picture in an odd, alienating manner that’s the most obviously sliced apart element of the film. Incredulously, the film rattles briskly through its more detailed elements while lumbering slowly through the more boring ones. It makes its most apparent forebear, the similarly panned Wild Wild West, look like a masterpiece.

Unfortunately, the film is flawed conceptually, also; the dumb plot, fashioned by the usually good Neveldine and Taylor (of Crank and Gamer fame), features Turnbull and his cronies attempting to make U.S. citizens disillusioned through numerous acts of terrorism, arguably the most indirect route possible by which to overthrow the government. Of course, only Hex can stop them.

Though director Jimmy Hayward races through the cliches like his life depends on it, the real crime is just how goofy – but rarely fun – this film is. Just when you think the film has settled down into some sort of groove of badness, it turns out that, yes, Hex can talk to dead people, seemingly out of nowhere. Similarly baffling is the dismissive regard the film has for some of its established supporting players – Michael Shannon and Wes Bentley’s characters especially pop into frame for mere seconds at a time before disappearing for long stretches, with screen time totalling no more than a minute or two. Again, though, it has to be the studio-imposed hack job at work.

Simply, how hard should it be to make a film of this sort moderately entertaining? Though the acting and make-up is decent, the action is infrequent and stunted, and there’s just not enough of Fox prancing around in a corset. While some of Neveldine and Taylor’s tongue-in-cheek dialogue makes the cut, it is unsurprising to hear that several of their more outlandish ideas, not least that the film feature buckets of gore, have been nixed here, and of course, the further axing of the filmed footage only makes things worse.

There’s an admirable simple-mindedness to narratives like this, but that presupposes a certain quality of execution that isn’t present here. Rather, Hex is best viewed as an example of how poorly studio intervention can impinge on talented artists, even if the final, wrangle-free product would still have been pretty naff.

http://movieblaze.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/blazin-review-jonah-hex/

September 10, 2010
Blazin’ Review: Jonah Hex
Posted by movieblaze
Starring: Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, Wes Bentley

Director: Jimmy Hayward

Writer(s): Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor, William Farmer, Jimmy Heyward

Cinematography: Mitchell Amundsen

Original Score: Marco Beltrami, Mastodon

Running Time: 81 Mins.

It’s no secret that Jonah Hex has suffered a, shall we say, turbulent road from (DC comic book) page-to-screen, changing between writers, star and directors (even after the shoot was complete on that count) to finally get a release stateside that left it with a hastily fumbled marketing strategy that suggested Warner’s knew they had a dud and simply wanted it swept under the DTV rug, odd given that it really isn’t all that bad when stacked against some of the other guff we have to sit through on a week by week basis (Grown Ups or The Box anyone?), and certainly in the pantheon of comic book to film adaptations it is far from the worst (Elektra? Ghost-Rider?). Which begs the question what DID go wrong along the way? I would like to answer that simply with the words “studio interference”.

As a character Hex is hardly an easy sell, it is a story that takes in, rebirth, the undead, hi-tech machinery in a period setting and that classic genre that fares not so well in these modern times, the western. Given that Warner’s also funded Wild Wild West you’s have thought they would veer clear of subject matter that has so many similarities, yet despite all it’s critics I would maintain (as with Jonah Hex to an extent) that it is a misunderstood effort and one that on its own merits deserves credit. Alas where Wild Wild West had a little substance Jonah Hex struggles somewhat. This can not be held against star Brolin or Director Hayward who gamely do their best with what is clearly a hacked down script, Brolin giving his all a the Clint Eastwood of the comic book world.

But where Brolin just about manages to make his mark everyone else is reduced to bit parts or cameos due to the harsh running time, 80 minutes is as brief a film as you will find all year with even Disney’s Tinkerbell film running longer, this is simply a sign of studio control in the edit suite hacking away until all you have is a harshly brief plot that needed so much more time to breathe. The saddest part of this is that there are glimpses of something really good to be found, just enough in fact to make the experience that exists more than just the mess it seems bound to be remembered as.

The action is writ on a big canvas yet without a proper edit they are usually cut down to a flurry of explosions and bloodless shoot-outs, the biggest fault given as a character (like the Punisher before him) Hex is a vicious man in a vicious time given a vicious birth, none of which are fully exploited and all the weaker for it. The Hi-tech weaponry features briefly (getting the pattern yet) but not enough to matter leaving what little there is seeming rather pointless, in fatc the only plot point used to its full effect is Hex’s ability to talk to the dead showing Hayward’s eye for film extends to more than what it is reduced to over-all.

What Malkovich, Fassbender, Fox, Shannon and Bentley thought they had signed up for surely gave them more to work with than on display here, Malkovich in particualr does not resort to over-acting rather he simply looks bored with Fassbender (tellingly) the only one looking to have fun in a film that needed more of it, with Bentley, Shannon and Arnett reduced to one or two scenes at most, Jonah Hex was surely a costly experiment and one that thanks to studio interference frustratingly displays only glimmers of what could have been.

VERDICT

Jonah Hex is not the unwatchable mess you will likely have read, alas it is not really enough of anything to be the enjoyable but dark spectacle it could have been. Sure, it will pass the time and there’s a glimpse of fun here and a shade of darkness there but ultimately it is a slave to its brutal (and unfair) edit.

d-

http://thehorrorclub.blogspot.com/2010/10/day-4-monday-october-4th.html

October 4, 2010
Day 4- Monday, October 4th
Some old favorites, some new unknowns... we're watching 100 movies in 31 days!

#10- Jonah Hex (2010)- This movie is a bit of a jumbled mess, but is entertaining enough if you are willing to shut your brain off and not think at all. It's interesting to see a comic book movie that has a supernatural bent to it, even if it deviates from the comics a bit. Jonah Hex is a mystical hero, at least in the movie, in that he can bring the dead back to life by touching them, which allows hm to question them or just have a chat. He's also a prolific marksman, and likes to kill, so he makes for a good time.

Josh Brolin is a hell of an actor, and he is interesting as Hex. He basically singlehandedly makes this movie interesting and watchable. John Malkovich is as good as he always is in this, and he really does excel at playing the villain. He makes us hate him with ease. Megan Fox is useless in this, and further proves that she cant act her way out of a nutsack. I know many think she's the hottest woman alive, but how does she keep getting work, even if it's in sub par movies?

The problem with Jonah Hex is that it seems to be missing parts, and is edited haphazardly (at least it feels that way to us.) At various points during the movie, it seemed as if scenes were cut short, chopped up, or just randomly thrown in there for the hell of it. Too bad, because the action was fun and all of the editing bs distracts from the good stuff.

C- (5.0/10) Jonah Hex is a messy movie that suffers from too much jumping around and choppy editing, but can be fun in the right mindset. Kinda. Brolin is awesome, the supernatural angle is interesting, and the action is fun in places, but you have to shut your mind off and ignore the myriad of other flaws to be able to enjoy any of those things.

http://noteimperfect.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-many-men-you-seein-today.html

Saturday, November 13, 2010
"How many men you seein', today?"

There's a scene in Hudson Hawk that comes to mind: Hawk (Bruce Willis) and Tommy Five-Tone (Danny Aiello) have just taken the Sforza from the museum. They're cornered on the roof by one of the guards. Given that the guard is trigger-happy, they figure (taking a leaf from Van Halen) they might as well jump (jump!). The two men fall from the building. The audience is on the edge of their seats; surely, they wouldn't kill off the hero and his sidekick this early in the piece...then the very next scene shows Hawk landing comfortably in a recliner in Gates' apartment. No explanation is ever made for how we got from the building to the apartment. (A moment like this could, justifiably, be seen as a dealbreaker for most moviegoers. Not me, however.)

Imagine a movie like this, lurching from one scene to another with little (if any) explanation and you might get Jonah Hex. True to my prediction, this film wasn't that bad. Thanks to my store's Redbox (and a free coupon; the film co-stars Megan Fox and a man without principles is a man with nothing), I rented the film.

It must be said that Josh Brolin is the glue that (albeit barely) holds the movie together. One could certainly believe he was acting in a more cohesive "Jonah Hex" movie. John Malkovich was okay as Turnbull, though not quite as persuasive as, say, Cyrus the Virus in Con Air. Despite her flat delivery, Megan Fox neither ruins nor improves the film.

One of the bigger surprises is the wealth of familiar names in bits, like Michael Shannon, Aidan Quinn, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett (you will do a double-take when you see him) and, apparently, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (who I only learned was in the film from checking the film's IMDB page).

All in all, a decent guilty pleasure; nothing you have to see or miss.

Labels: movies, reviews

posted by lonestarr357 @ 9:35 PM

http://www.forcesofgeek.com/2010/11/jonah-hex-dvd-review.html

Saturday, November 13, 2010
JONAH HEX (dvd review)
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment // Released October 12, 2010 // Rated PG-13

The Pitch
Out of the pages of the legendary comics and graphic novels steps Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin), a scarred drifter and bounty hunter of last resort who can track anyone…and anything. Having survived death, Jonah’s violent history is steeped in myth and legend and has left him with one foot in the natural world and one on the “other side.” His one human connection is with Lilah (Megan Fox), whose life in a brothel has left her with scars of her own. But Jonah’s past catches up with him when the U.S. military makes him an offer he can’t refuse: to wipe out the warrants on his head, he must hunt and stop dangerous terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). But Turnbull, now gathering an army and preparing to unleash Hell, is also Jonah’s oldest enemy and will stop at nothing until Jonah is dead.



The Review
Jonah Hex is less of a bad movie and more of a disjointed one. With a too brief running time of 81 minutes, the film feels like there was once a more interesting film that's been chipped away to almost nothing. Even the supernatural elements of the film (which don't exist in the comic) feel like reshoot material, not blending cohesively with the rest of the tone or narrative.

The performances themselves also seem to be reminiscent of a larger work. The ensemble, including Brolin, Malkovich, Fox, Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender, Wes Bentley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Michael Shannon, and Tom Wopat all deserve better. Brolin's Hex (simply thanks to the amount of screen time) is pretty entertaining as he chews the scenery and sets a tone hinting at what might have been.

For a studio so focused on comic book properties, recent releases including The Losers, Whiteout, and now, Jonah Hex, have suffered from tinkering and focus groups. If there's a two hour director's cut of Jonah Hex out there, I certainly would be interested in seeing it. It might not be good, but at least it would be something. Extras include several brief deleted scenes that don't amount to anything.

I can't say that Jonah Hex is worth seeing, except it is interesting to see just to imagine what might have been.

http://www.negromancer.com/2010/11/jonah-hex-not-really-that-bad.html

Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Jonah Hex: Not Really THAT Bad


TRASH IN MY EYE No. 93 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Jonah Hex (2010)
Running time: 81 minutes (1 hour, 21 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images and sexual
DIRECTOR: Jimmy Hayward
WRITERS: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor; from a story by William Farmer and Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (based upon the characters appearing in magazines published by DC Comics created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga)
PRODUCERS: Akiva Goldsman and Andrew Lazar
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Mitchell Amundsen (D.o.P)
EDITORS: Kent Beyda, Dan Hanley, Tom Lewis, and Fernando Villena
COMPOSERS: Marco Beltrami and Mastodon

WESTERN/ACTION with elements of horror

Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Aidan Quinn, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, John Gallagher, Jr., Tom Wopat, Michael Shannon, Wes Bentley, John McConnell, and Lance Reddick with Jeffrey Dean Morgan (no screen credit)

Jonah Hex is a recent Western, released by Warner Bros. Pictures this past June. The title character, Jonah Hex, is one of DC Comics’ Western characters, and this anti-hero type is a bounty hunter whose face is horribly scarred on the right side. Created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga, Jonah Hex made his first appearance in the early 1970s.

During the American Civil War, Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) fought for the Confederacy. However, Hex turned against his commanding officer, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), after Turnbull ordered him to burn down a hospital. After the war, a vengeful Turnbull killed Hex’s wife and son and branded his initials into Hex’s face.

Most of the movie takes place in 1876. As the country prepares for the Centennial celebration, Turnbull plots a July 4th terrorist attack using a devastating super weapon, an attack he believes will topple the American government and destroy the nation. President Grant (Aidan Quinn) orders the U.S. military to find Jonah Hex, who has many warrants on his head, and make him an offer he can’t refuse. In exchange for his freedom (and some cash), Hex must stop Turnbull. Hex, who can temporarily resurrect and communicate with the dead, uses all his talents and an array of firearms to fight his way through Turnbull’s men. Hex also gets help from Lilah (Megan Fox), a gun-wielding prostitute in love with him.

Jonah Hex was a critical and commercial flop during its theatrical release. I initially avoided the movie because the trailers looked dumb, and I thought that the movie was probably even dumber. When the opportunity to see it came around again, the first thing I thought was, I bet I’ll like this movie. And I did.

Jonah Hex is not really all that bad a movie. First, it really isn’t a Western. It is more a weird faux-Western like Will Smith’s 1999 flick, Wild Wild West. Also, a lot of this is clearly tongue-in-cheek. The director, Jimmy Hayward, tries too hard to make this film different. The film really doesn’t have much in the way of familiar Hollywood Western iconography, visual cues, or symbolism. The creators dress this movie to look like a Western, then, do everything to make it not a Western. Still, the film, at times, manages to have some good, Western-style action sequences.

The film’s writers, William Farmer and the team of (Mark) Neveldine and (Brian) Taylor, pack the story with a lot of ideas to ponder, including weird occult stuff, the character of revenge, and nature of war. There are also many scenes that are extraneous and/or badly staged, such as the motion comic-like origin story early in the film. In a comic book, this heap of weird ideas and scenes would likely not be a problem. In a film, it just makes the narrative move awkwardly.

Ultimately, the cast does right by this movie. Megan Fox makes the best of a poorly designed character. John Malkovich is, as always, superb in menacing, villainous role. Michael Fassbender is a scene-stealer as Turnbull’s homicidal right-hand man, Burke. Of course, Josh Brolin continues to prove himself as an exciting movie star and high-quality actor. It is remarkable what he does with the cheesy dialogue here. Brolin makes me wish for a sequel that may likely never come. For all its faults, Jonah Hex is so weird and is such kooky fun that it is not actually that bad.

5 of 10
C+

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

http://movieslifeandotherquestions.blogspot.com/2010/11/jonah-hex-movie-review.html

Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Jonah Hex (Movie Review)
Jonah Hex (2010)
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Stars: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender


Jonah Hex, first introduced in the comic book All-Star Western back in 1972, is a unique character: An anti-heroic, horribly disfigured bounty hunter, riding the trails of the old west in adventures that gravitate towards the strange. He meets his share of standard cattle-rustlers and bank robbers, but occasionally he'll run into a zombie or Lovecraftian beast. It's no wonder that soon after his first appearance, he dominated All-Star Western, which was retitled Weird Western Tales. He's appeared in two separate series since, and in various other mini-series and DC Comics crossovers. He's not an institution like Spider-Man, but he's developed his own little fan club over the years. Makes sense that a movie might be made.

There are two main obstacles with a Jonah Hex movie. One, he's uglier than sin. They solved this problem by casting the uber-handsome Josh Brolin, and by slightly de-uglifying him (He keeps the jaw exposing wound on his mouth, but loses the bulging eye). Two, he's a former Confederate soldier. Now, there's a large portion of the population that would have NO problem with that (Even in the Yankee state that I live), but it's a contentious enough issue that it has to be addressed. Problem solved; Lance Reddick appears as the Q to Brolin's Bond, and has some obligatory "But you don't like slavery, Jonah!" dialogue.

This was a troubled production from the start. After being hired to direct, writers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (of Crank fame) left due to creative differences, leading to Horton Hears A Who director Jimmy Hayward signing on. After production was finished, WB sent Francis Lawrence in to do some massive reshoots. The end result is a movie that's barely over an hour long, and has characters played by some impressive actors (Will Arnett, Michael Shannon) who vanish about as fast as they're introduced. Clearly, this is a case of too many cooks sullying the stew. But is it completely ruined?

There's some fun to be had here, I believe. The plot revolves around Jonah Hex seeking revenge on the man who killed his family, former Confederate general Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). Turnbull, meanwhile, has stolen a WMD that was designed by Eli Whitney, and plans on using it to rain terror down on the US government. Jonah, being able to speak to the dead (If there's a precedent for that in the comics, I'm unaware of it), uses their knowledge to ascertain Turnbull's whereabouts. Megan Fox is the hooker with the heart of gold. s$#! blows up.

One thing that I really enjoyed was seeing this incredible cast in an extremely goofy movie; compare it to the experience of watching the John Huston directed Casino Royale, or Radioland Murders. Arnett, Reddick, Shannon, Brolin, Malkovich, Aiden Quinn and Jeffrey Dean Morgan all give enjoyable performances (In Michael Shannon's case, it's for about half a second). My boy Michael Fassbender easily steals the movie as the bowler-hatted mad Irish henchman of Turnbull. He understands how ludicrous the film is, and gives a performance on par with Colin Farrell's energetic turn as Bullseye in the Daredevil movie.

The film looks pretty enough, shot by Transformers and GI Joe cinematographer Mitchell Amundsen. And the score is agreeable; a collaboration between Marco Beltrami and rock group Mastodon. The main problems are the too fast, choppy editing; the too epic villain, who seems more appropriate for a Wild Wild West movie; and the serious lack of character development, which causes you to be pretty detached from the proceedings.

An entertaining mess of a film, but as a narrative. . . not so great.

Frederick Opines: MIDDLING
Posted by Frederick Frog at 11:30 PM

http://sergioleoneifr.blogspot.com/

Friday, November 26, 2010
JONAH HEX: DEAD MEN RIDIN' AND TALKIN'



Jonah Hex, the movie, opens with a flurry of visual storytelling—marked more, and tellingly so, by wide vistas and lap dissolves than the usual Cuisinart-a-thon cutting-- that initiates you into the foundation of the movie’s central revenge scenario in such a brisk and tidy manner that at first you might feel as though you missed something. “War and me got along real well,” says Hex, the titular protagonist (Josh Brolin), a Confederate soldier who tells us further in his opening narration that he was always motivated to fight because he always did so believing it was the right thing to do. But after resisting the implementation of a bit of terrorism ordered by the vicious general Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), whose son is both his best friend and fellow soldier, Hex betrays his regiment to a Yankee outfit, which allows him to avoid execution. The general’s son is not so lucky, and after escaping a similar fate himself General Turnbull arranges for the crucifixion of his ex-soldier, forcing Hex to watch his own son and wife die. Turnbull tops off the atrocity by branding Hex with a “QT” on his face to remind him of the general’s wrath. (Hex’s signature disfigurement, a massively scarred cheek and a gnarled strip of flesh which bridges his upper and lower lip, is a gift Hex gives himself, the result of an attempt to unload the brand with the edge of a white-hot hatchet blade. It’s a look that cements his somewhat demonic countenance, but it also makes downing a shot of rye a necessarily more measured and difficult act.)


All this happens, with the help of montage and some visual suggestion, in the first five minutes of the movie. Soon Hex is off on his mission of revenge, hunting down Turnbull and his band of raiders, who have plans even more grand and dastardly than those of real-life Confederate raider William Quantrill, whose notorious image Turnbull's name is meant to conjure. Malkovich is relatively subdued as Turnbull, oozing self-righteous fury and contempt as only this actor can, albeit with the effects dialed down to 8 or 9 this go-around. All the better for leaving the serious scenery gobbling to Michael Fassbender who, after a run of serious roles in films like Inglourious Basterds, Hunger and Centurion, obviously gets a huge buzz from playing a cackling, tattooed Irish terrorist, Turnbull’s A-1 henchman-sadist. “Jonah Hex!” he shouts with twisted delight upon encountering our hero, “I’d recognize that undercooked pie hole anywhere!” The buzz is translated to the audience— Fassbender is, as always, magnetic. He’s the thinking person’s Sam Worthington, and as such it'll be no shock that he hasn't yet nailed the role that would make him a global star. (He and we might be better off if he ultimately doesn't.) But the movie rests on the weary but wide shoulders of Josh Brolin as the disfigured, disconsolate but ever-motivated Hex, a character drawn from a series of mid-70s DC comics whose revival in graphic novel form presaged this movie adaptation. On the page Hex has a personage much more resonant of hell-spawned demons than the more human carriage of guilt and fury weighing down Brolin’s Hex as he travels the prairies and mountains, first as a bounty hunter, then as a supernaturally-aided avenger. But even without the white-hot brimstone packaging, the temptation might have been to play Hex exclusively for his grim purity, a single-minded vision of hate-filled eyes burning for revenge, Clint Eastwood by way of Coffin Joe. Brolin, fortunately, allows for some humor—he has a way with a slightly upturned eyebrow when measuring his enemies that would make any good comic envious. And he does well with the obligatory dry one-liners— “What happened to your face?” taunts one of Turnbull’s goons, to which Hex responds with a tomahawk to the neck and an elegantly tossed-off “I’m all out of wise-ass answers,” a clue to Hex’s weariness as well as a nifty rejoinder to a couple decades worth of witty (and more often wilted) movie comeback lines.


What’s most surprising about Jonah Hex is the way in which it inhabits the traditions and ambience of the movie western. There’s real mournfulness when Hex rides his horse through a Confederate graveyard—director Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who!) gives us the time to soak in the image rather than force us to play it back in our minds, an afterimage left by a squall of too-quickly-successive visual jolts. The echoes of the genre’s most revered and not-so-revered ancestry coursing through this movie’s DNA are plentiful, none perhaps so welcome as its insistence, despite its multimillion-dollar budget, upon alternating those wide-screen vistas with a playfulness that keeps this violent movie from getting dour. Hayward retains a sense of splendor at the western landscape that isn’t violated by editing the images into reflective, incoherent shards (something that might have happened had the movie been directed by its scenarists, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the auteurs responsible for the Crank movies), all the while keeping with the pace and purpose of a full-color version of one of John Wayne’s pre-Stagecoach Republic Pictures. (Jonah Hex, which maybe could have actually used a little more meat on its bones, runs a snappy, bloat-free 82 minutes.) The movie’s neatest conceit is Hex’s ability to revive the dead with a touch, an ability not derived from the original comic books, if memory serves. It’s here bestowed on him by Neveldine and Taylor through the intervention of Native American healers after the physical and emotional violence of Turnbull’s assault. This ability turns out to be a lively way to dealing with that ol’ exposition problem, and it sets up a terrific scene between Hex and his dead, ex-best friend, Jed Turnbull, who hops out of the grave ready to continue the fight Hex ended his life on.

Admittedly, Jonah Hex’s aspirations exceed its reach—tonally, the movie never strikes a proper balance between its western roots, the overtly supernatural elements that occasionally lead it into blackly humorous Tales from the Crypt territory, and its own desires to fulfill the visual ambitions of the stock Hollywood blockbuster. Turnbull hopes to take his own personal extension of the War Between the States to a national level with the help of a high-tech weapon which fires little gold cannonballs that deliver much pictorially impressive destruction. But as Jonah inches closer to foiling Turnbull’s plot, the movie inches closer to a more 21st-century Hollywood conventional conclusion, an episode of Mission: Impossible on horseback, or worse yet, an unfortunate reminder of another TV western adaptation which this leaner, meaner movie thankfully far outstrips. And certainly I would have appreciated the casting of someone other than the plasticine Megan Fox as Hex’s romantic interest. This Flavor of the Moment’s heavy-lidded beauty and flat-line vocal expressions remind me of nothing so much as a blow-up doll on opiates; she hasn’t the spark to make me believe in her character’s feisty survival instincts. (Think what an equally beautiful but far more interesting actress like Mila Kunis or Maggie Q could have brought to this role. Fox, on the other hand, only makes me think she’d like nothing more than to blow off this movie stuff, curl up in her trailer and go to sleep.)

I was an avid reader of the comic’s initial incarnation in 1977, but stopped reading well before its cancellation in 1985, yet I only caught the movie on DVD a few nights ago after having missed it during its short theatrical run. And I was more than a little surprised by the fact that I enjoyed Jonah Hex quite a lot. Even so, I feel like I was holding my breath for at least the first half in dread of stumbling upon the moment when the movie would turn into the stinker I’d been led to believe it was from the multitude of dismissive reviews rained upon it this past June. Strangely, it never came. After the movie ended, it was no surprise to check out the roster of writers who had issues with the movie, some more intelligently expressed than others, to be sure. And I had remembered than Armond White liked it. But White’s prose reads like the words of someone desperate to justify his enjoyment of the movie by avoiding addressing it with anything like its own tone. When White writes, “Jonah’s post-Civil War adventure parallels contemporary malaise. N&T adapt the… comic book to fit their timely sense of disquiet and cultural confusion—that post 9/11 dread that Bruce Springsteen aptly described as ‘a fairy tale so tragic,’” well, let’s just say we differ as to why we liked Jonah Hex.

However, reading Stephanie Zacharek’s review was a bit like getting a friendly zap from a joy buzzer. Were it not for the fact of her superior ability to express herself and use language that sounds as if she speaking with you rather than at you, I would have thought I’d written the review myself, so close was it to my own experience with the movie. Of course, the percentage to which one agrees or disagrees with a critic is no measure of that critic’s worth to her subject or as a writer in general, and I have differed with Ms. Zacharek enough during my history of reading her to say this with absolute conviction. (She still hasn’t seen the light on Speed Racer.) But what marks her as a smart, independent voice is not so much her willingness to speak her mind in the face of a publicist’s wet dream of prefab conventional wisdom-- she has registered early, well-articulated objections to The Dark Knight, Inception, Up and any number of other reliably well-received hits—but a quality I value even more, a willingness to step up to the plate for pictures with bad buzz or built-in resistance to being taken seriously even as disposably enjoyable mass entertainment. Some of my favorite pieces by Zacharek in the past few years have been her spirited defenses of the low-brow pleasures of movies and series like The Transporter or The Fantastic Four, or performances like Sandra Bullock’s in The Blind Side, about which seemingly every right-thinking, multiculturally oriented liberal had already decided had gone too easy on the movie’s Bible-thumping Southern Christian protagonist (and, of course, by extension, Bible-thumping Southern Christianity) who would exorcise her white guilt by lending a hand to the Po’ Black Man.

Well, add Zacharek’s keen review of Jonah Hex, published last June on Movieline, to that list. Zacharek starts off with a line that might lead you to think you’re in for one of those “It’s so bad it’s good” pieces: “There’s something to be said for low expectations, especially when it comes to summer movies.” Let the nudge-nudge-wink-wink condescension begin, right? Well, no. This critic then proceeds to neatly sum up precisely why the movie worked for her, in language that suggests she enjoys engaging with it on its own lowdown terms. It has something to do with Josh Brolin playing Hex “with a wink and a snarl” and “a relatively restrained John Malkovich — for once he cuts the scenery into bite-size morsels before chewing it.” But after elaborating where the movie also doesn’t work for her (including a train robbery sequence that, despite a horrifically explosion conclusion, fizzles for momentum’s sake), she settles on praising director Hayward for the “downright leisurely” way he approaches the film’s visual strategy. In the essay's highlight, Zacharek writes:

“Jonah’s suffering is the usual alone-in-the-landscape business, but Hayward at least tries to find some poetry in his desolation. At one point Jonah approaches a cemetery on horseback — there’s a corpse in there what needs talkin’ to — and Hayward uses a simple wide shot to capture the idea that, among a mass of white headstones with rotting bodies beneath them, Jonah at least has the meager advantage of being alive.”

That’s called seeing the movie. It’s also why I’ve come to value Stephanie Zacharek’s writing—as Hex himself might say, she’s quick, she’s got herself a lip, and she ain’t no snob. (She’s also not blind—check out her review of Skyline if you think she’s a sucker for every piece of junk that appears-- appears-- to aim low.) Now, if I could only get her to see the light on the Wachowski Brother’s masterpiece…

*************************************************

Posted by Dennis Cozzalio at 3:07 PM 2 comments

http://death-by-dizziness.blogspot.com/2010/11/movie-review-jonah-hex.html

Monday, November 29, 2010
Movie Review: Jonah Hex
Description of Movie --- The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth.
Directed by: Jimmy Hayward
Produced by: Akiva Goldsman and Andrew Lazar
Screenplay by: Neveldine/Taylor
Story by: Neveldine/Taylor and William Farmer
Based on: Jonah Hex by John Albano and Tony Dezuniga
Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, and Michael Shannon
Studio: Legendary Pictures, DC Comics, Mad Chance, and Weed Road Pictures
Distributed by: Warner Bros.
Release date: June 18, 2010
Running time: 81 minutes

My Opinion --- This movie was advertised a lot, and based on the preview, I was definitely excited to see this film.
The movie was good, but there were some elements to make this movie fall short of being great. A lot of the storyline seem rushed, I mean really, really rushed. It loses that human value, making the movie kinda cold and just about revenge. There is no sense of understanding the character and he’s feelings, making him hard to relate to. Another downfall is Megan Fox’s accent in this movie. 1st let me say Megan Fox is a beautiful and is a pretty good actress, but the accent was just horrible and quite frankly, really annoying.
Overall this movies storyline was good even though it was rushed at some points. Acting was so-so, definitely could have been better. And the special effects were very nice.

Overall score:(3.5 out of 5)

Hope You Enjoyed This Entry. Till Next Time!
OX-Dizzy
P.s. If you have your own opinion about this movie please don’t hesitate to write a comment. I would love to hear your thoughts. And if you have a request on what movie I should review next, let me know.

http://chewypopcorn.com/jonah-hex-2010-review/

Title: Jonah Hex (2010) Review
Posted by : Terry Larch
5th
Dec

Jonah Hex (2010)

This film was undoubtedly one of the more cheesy films I’ve seen recently, and had potential to be much better. What I did think was decent was actor Josh Brolin (Husband of actress Diane Lane) as Jonah Hex whom you might remember from his past performances in classics like his first feature film The Goonies (1985) as Brandon ‘Brand’ Walsh.

He could not save this film from its bad writing however by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. William Farmer also worked on the story as well. I know they certainly could have done better. The origination of antihero Jonah Hex comes from All-Star Western issue #10 originally released by DC Comics during Feb-Mar 1972. The comic series was written by John Albano and Tony Dezuniga.

Jonah Hex is a damned character faced to walk the earth again with the powers to communicate with the dead and animals. His sole purpose for existence is to seek revenge from being wronged in life. This film focuses on this and tries to play out a storyline for it.

The back story of the character was only briefly highlighted as Jonah faced addictions with alcoholism. (Although in a few scenes you see him drinking) He also dealt with his mother who became a prostitute and the loss of his Native American family by the hands of Quentin Turnbull played by the talented John Malkovich. In this film, you see Jonah briefly meet up several times with Lilah played by Megan Fox. She is a prostitute selling herself to men in exchange for money. Apparently both her and Jonah have a history together.

Jonah Hex faces a choice to choose between his freedom or the life of being a vigilante hired hitman. The abilities he has are interesting and this film reminds me of The Crow (1994) starring the late Brandon Lee. This film also is all about revenge and the search for some kind of justice by the lead character.

Michael Fassbender plays the Irish immigrant Burke who wields a deadly set of knives and is the right hand man of Quentin Turnbull the man who Jonah seeks revenge upon. Actor Michael Fassbender was the right man for the job who was born in Heidelberg, Germany. He is part German and part Irish. Look for him to appear in the upcoming classics due out sometime within the next few years titled The Hobbit: Part 1 (2012) and The Hobbit: Part 2 (2013). He also will appear in X-Men: First Class (2011) the origination of the X-Men specifically the Professor X and Magneto characters when they first discover their powers.

Will Arnett also appears in Jonah Hex as Lieutenant Grass a cocky character with attitude and a sense of command. John Gallagher Jr. plays Lieutenant Evan, Tom Wopat plays Colonel Slocum, Michael Shannon plays Doc Cross Williams and Wes Bentley plays Adleman Lusk. Jonah’s family was played by Julia Jones as Cassie and their son Travis was played by Luke James Fleischmann.

One thing is for certain, who could ever forget that nasty scar he had. All in all, I guess I found it difficult to get too involved in this film as its overall story was missing some things. It is odd how it fell flat; I could see it being better with some more interesting sub plots thrown in. However, I made it through watching this and so did my wife. I can only recommend this to fans of western films such as Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and science fiction fans. It might still spark some kind of interest.
Jonah Hex (2010) Review, 2.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2010 at 8:23 pm a

http://www.whatsplaying.com.au/2010/12/jonah-hex/

Jonah Hex

By Brian Orndorf | December 5, 2010

* Release Date: December 8, 2010
* Details: 78 mins, M, Western
* Starring: Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon
* Directed By: Jimmy Hayward

Jonah Hex isn’t necessarily a bad film, it’s just nothing at all. Oh, there’s plenty wrong with this big screen adaptation of the DC Comics western hero, but it’s hard to stay angry with the film when the fingerprints of studio intervention are all over this movie, which has been whittled down to a scant 74 minutes in length. It’s hard to accomplish anything richly cinematic in 74 minutes, much less create a persuasive adventure for a character who’s been kicking around the world of funny books since 1972.

Turning on his psychotic superior Turnbull (John Malkovich) during the Civil War, Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) was rewarded with the murder of his family and Turnbull’s brand burned across his cheek. Left for dead, Hex survived due to the resuscitative efforts of the local Native Americans, who gifted the disfigured gunslinger the ability to speak with the dead. Now a nomad bounty hunter, Hex is called back into military duty by President Grant (Aidan Quinn) when it’s clear Turnbull is once again up to no good, assembling a doomsday weapon capable of destroying America on the eve of its centennial celebration. Off to slaughter the man that ruined his life, Hex finds a distraction in saloon whore Lilah (Megan Fox), the one person to find a soul within the scarred killing machine.

Perhaps handing a gruff, violent comic book icon to the director of Horton Hears a Who wasn’t the best idea in the world. Jimmy Hayward is clearly out of his element with this picture, unable to plainly communicate the necessary information it takes to build a simplistic story of revenge, villainy, and mass destruction. Actually, Hayward has the destruction part down pretty well, since most of Jonah Hex is devoted to overkill explosions, trying to keep the audience awake while the meat cleaver editing mangles the story past a point of recognition. There appears to be much more to the world of Jonah Hex than this movie lets on, with the studio shaving the final product down to basic elements of violence, sex appeal (oddly, Fox’s face has been digitally smoothed out for reasons unknown), and scenery-chewing performances. The entire mythology of Hex has been lost in the hasty cutting, leaving behind a teeth-rattling bore that never lifts off the ground.

Of course, I’m merely assuming the studio went crazy reining in the final cut of Jonah Hex. After all, the screenplay is credited to Neveldine/Taylor, the gentlemen behind the intolerable Crank franchise and Gamer. Seeing how the twosome have refused all opportunities to tell a coherent story before, perhaps Jonah Hex is intentionally distracted, blurring past bizarre mystical behavior that has our hero conversing with the dead (using dirt to “cool” the corpses down before Hell comes calling), or envisioning his final fight with Turnbull in acid-trip hues before he ever has a chance to sock it to the bloated bad guy in person. It’s never outright confusing, but the script is just vague enough to keep Hex a total question mark all the way through to the end credits.

The grimacing bright spot here is Brolin, who’s well cast as the half-dead hero, attempting to spit atrocious lines past his mouth-sealing facial makeup. Brolin has the swagger for Hex and the cowboy knowhow, but his charms can’t slap the movie awake, though he earns a participant ribbon just for enduring some of the more hopeless ideas here, most merging Old West traditions with borderline sci-fi touches. Malkovich is Malkovich, sleepwalking through his villain role, but the real curiosity is Megan Fox. Prominently billed in the marketing, Fox only hangs around the picture for maybe 10 minutes tops, long enough to purr her own set of awful dialogue and display her tightly corseted figure. In the end, there’s no reason for her character to even exist in the screenplay.

Despite nanosecond cameos from a host of semi-famous faces (including Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender, Wes Bentley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Michael Shannon, and Tom Wopat), Jonah Hex never gets up to a full gallop, instead lurching from beat to beat minus necessary connective tissue to make the mayhem matter. Glossy and gutted, Jonah Hex turns the cowboy with a melted mouth into a grunting moviegoing chore. But at least it’s a ridiculously short chore.

Extras : Deleted Scenes (With the film running only 78 Minutes, there was sure to be some)

http://theworldofdisgruntledmonkey.blogspot.com/2010/12/review-jonah-hex-2010.html

Monday, December 20, 2010
Review - Jonah Hex (2010)
“Jonah Bloody Hex! I’d know that Half-Baked piehole anywhere!”

Director: Jimmy Hayward
Starring: Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich
Writers: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

When I heard that Jonah Hex was being turned into a movie I was kind of buzzed. I have a weak spot for Westerns and with Jonah Hex I saw a great potential for a solid Horror Western film. Then the casting was announced and we had Josh Brolin and John Malkovich I was even more excited. Josh Brolin in my mind was a great choice for Hex and Malkovich is a good bet when it comes to villains (we don’t mention Eragon). Then word got leaked out that a lot of the film was being reshot due to ‘problems.’ I’m not sure what these problems were; I didn’t want to delve into it. Trailers were released and it looked okay, but my faith was wavering. Then negative reviews hit and I don’t think it was ever released in Australia. Sound the death bell. Well I’ve finally caught up with Hex and I’m ready to deal out some rough justice.

Ouch man. That’s all I got to really say about this movie. It’s sad as there was so much potential but instead of sticking to one idea and running with it they tried to please way too many people. Also watching the movie I couldn’t help but feel how incomplete it felt. The origin of Jonah Hex is done in a cartoon that just doesn’t gel with the rest of the movie. I guess that’s the major complaint of this movie, nothing gels together; it’s a patchwork of a movie and instead of something good the film makers have created a Frankenstein’s monster of a movie that will surely throw many children into various water sources.

Acting wise Josh Brolin is actually pretty good if maybe over doing the growling at times. He does seem to be acting a little more serious than the film demands and as such when you have cartoony characters rocking up into scene it just doesn’t work. John Malkovich just seems bored, or at least I was bored with his performance. I didn’t care about the villains motivations and only wanted him dead as it meant the movie wouldn’t be far from ending. Megan Fox as Lilah the tough prostitute with a heart of gold is yet another nail in her careers coffin. Yet if anything this time it isn’t her fault as she is given absolutely nothing to work with, her character is so underdeveloped I feel sorry for her. Finally I will give a shout out to Michael Fassbender as the character Burke. As John Malkovich’s right hand flunky his character at least interested me and I was more excited to see him and Hex throw down than any other clash.

Story wise we have a plot that has both Steampunk elements and Supernatural elements and it doesn’t seem to know what to do with both of them. In fact the entire story just seems overly complex for something that should have been a straight revenge story with maybe a tinge of the supernatural. Why add the Steampunk elements if you are not going to use them? Why over complicate a simple story with weird deviations? (Weird deviations like snake men. Yeah I don’t get it either) One of the writers (Mark Neveldine) was the man behind Crank, Crank 2 and Gamer. Love these movies or hate them but they had a simple story that drove the plot forward at a rapid pace, oh and they also dealt with revenge elements.

Finally the entire look of the movie is pretty decent, but as with most of the movie it gets hurt thanks to the inconsistent tone. Some scenes can be playing up the goofiness yet then we cut to a cemetery where it’s obviously trying to play up the serious tone. I’m not sure who is really to blame for it all. But there is a sense that something’s were added just to make the scene seem cool rather than add anything to the story.

Okay I’m done with talking about Jonah Hex or that Western Mess. What could have been a very cool movie; something a little different; instead turned out to be a lame knock off of Wild Wild West. Please note what I just said, let those words sink into every cell of your being. I don’t recommend anyone watch this. People looking for the horror or steampunk elements aren’t going to get enough, those after the revenge story are probably going to be bored and those who love westerns are just going to want to watch some Sergio Leone movies to scrub their brains clean. I judge you Jonah Hex and I find you lacking.
Posted by DanFromAus at 10:08 PM

http://calcuttatube.com/jonah-hex-2010-dvd-release-josh-brolin-john-malkovich-megan-fox-michael-fassbender/129462/

JONAH HEX (2010) DVD Release: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender
Posted by Ankan Basu in Entertainment

Jonah Hex (2010) DVD Release

November 3, 2010 (Calcutta Tube): Jonah Hex is a 2010 Hollywood Action Movie directed by Jimmy Hayward starring Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett and others. Purchase the DVD of JONAH HEX online and receive 47% discount.

Another DC Comics hero gets a workout in Jonah Hex, the movie incarnation of DC’s scar-faced bounty hunter, played here by Josh Brolin. Out to exact revenge on the varmint who wrecked his face and killed his family, Jonah also gets yanked back into the service of his country–against his will, of course. Said varmint, Quentin Turnbull, is played by John Malkovich, although the more spirited villainy is provided by Turnbull’s tattooed Irish assistant (Inglourious Basterds’s Michael Fassbender plays the part with the kind of energy noticeably absent from the other cast members). In this 80-minute hodgepodge of a movie, Jonah regularly checks in with his lady friend, a prostitute (Megan Fox) whose bordello room has a remarkable amount of glamour lighting, and in his spare time investigates Turnbull’s plot to use a super weapon against Washington, D.C. By giving Jonah a halfway-interesting supernatural talent–he can talk with the dead, by placing his hands on them–the film adds a kicky new wrinkle, but it’s not enough to improve the mangled storytelling or the sleepwalking pace. Brolin’s makeup is impressive, but in scarring his cheek and pulling his mouth back in a grotesque grimace, the prosthetics designers have robbed the actor of any ability to express himself through speech. Kind of a miscalculation there, and typical of this movie’s tendency to shoot itself in the face. –Robert Horton

http://paladine.livejournal.com/524208.html

Van Helsing Goes To The Wild, Wild West

Once again, I find myself in a familiar situation. A movie is brought to my attention, proclaimed as being so terrible that it defies description. Then this movie finds its way onto the shelves of my local library and when the chance to see it for free arrives, something overwhelms me. I just have to see this movie. I have to see how bad it is. Have to know if it’s as terrible as everyone says. Considering this is how I came to see such films as Transformers 2, Alien vs. Predator: Requiem, The Marine and numerous Platinum Dunes movies, you’d think I’d learn to repress that particular impulse. But no, I can’t fight it and if they keep crapping out terrible movies, then I imagine I’ll keep jumping at the chance to see them for free.

(Well, within certain limitations. It has to be a movie that has a base concept that would appeal to me. Giant robots fighting it out, killer aliens and ex-marines vs. over-the-top villains? Sure! “Hey! Remember this thing?” comedies and tweener love stories about sparkling albino emos angsting over schtupping their girlfriends? f&#! that.)

But as much pain as this horrible compulsion has brought me, there are times when I come up lucky. Jonah Hex, as it turns out, was one of those instances. I won’t deny that this isn’t a good movie by any stretch of the imagination but when it was over, I felt no venom for it. It’s just another bad comic adaptation where the hero has to stop a villain and his silly super weapon. I can see what worked, what could have worked and what didn’t. Even for a movie that’s been cut to pieces and scrambled into a chaotic mess, it’s nowhere near the slog to get through that other derided comic book films like Fantastic 4, Superman Returns and X-Men 3 are. Sure, there are plenty of incoherent moments, bad casting choices and just plain weirdness, but at 72 minutes plus 6 or so of credits, it breezes by too fast for it any about it to really offend me.

That said, there is plenty wrong with this movie and brother, you bet that I’m going to write about it.

Josh Brolin in Robert Rodriguez’s Once Upon A Time In The West!

Now, I’m no expert on Jonah Hex. I haven’t read much in the way of comics featuring him, just a trade or two of Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s run. I was introduced to him via the episode of Batman: The Animated Series which featured a flashback to him fighting Ra’s Al Ghul in the Old West. (Which was pretty awesome.) That’s enough to get a lock on the character though. He’s essentially a pulpier version of the Outlaw Josey Wales, a scarred Confederate soldier turned bounty hunter. He has no powers outside of a brutal efficiency when it comes to killing and a steadfast refusal to lie down and die. He’s a thoroughly mean son of a bitch and his stories rarely end on a happy note for any party involved.

Granted, that presents one of the main problems with doing an adaptation of the character for the cinema. With Jonah Hex, what you have is a character clearly inspired by the archetype created by Clint Eastwood and countless others in cinema. In comics, he’s unique and iconic. Take him out of that realm and you’ve just got another grim frontier badass stomping through dusty streets and blowing away a dozen or so outlaws before he has to reload, of which movie screens have seen hundreds.

But y’know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. I love that type of exploitation / spaghetti western and we really haven’t seen a movie of that type in cinemas for a while now. I’d welcome an adaptation of the character along those lines. Just keep it lean, mean and have the ass kicking come at a good clip and we’re all set.

But the thing is they didn’t do that. Because instead of the Man With No Name, Jonah Hex is now a supernatural avenger. Not just being a gritty bounty hunter, he’s also a man who nearly crossed over to the other side after being left him to die. Now he can temporarily raise the dead, see and hear apparitions and is always followed by demonic crows that wait to drag him back to the other side. Apparently, the script by Neveldine and Taylor, the completely bent duo that gave us the Crank movies, had a strong horror bent, with arch-villain Quintin Turnbull using voodoo to raise an army of the dead to fight for him.

Sure, Jonah Hex has had encounters with the weird and supernatural before. A character doesn’t spend 40 some odd years getting published in comics without somebody throwing a curveball or two their way. Author Joe Lansdale famously had the character fight the undead and Lovecraftian beasties in stories published through DC’s Vertigo imprint. One of Palmiotti and Gray’s stories had him teaming up with a guy who was Zorro crossed with Ghost Rider. And hell, after Crisis on Infinite Earths, he spent some time in a post apocalyptic future. But he was always just Jonah Hex, a guy whose approach to any problem isn’t much fancier than shoot it in the face and move on. As Christopher Bird put it, Jonah Hex doesn’t use voodoo magic and weird gadgets to fight people. That’s what the guys he’s going after use to stave off Jonah from killing them for about five minutes.

But y’know what else? I think about it and I’m actually cool with this. Yeah, it’s not faithful to the comics but think about it, this could have been a movie about a badass supernatural gunslinger fighting some crazy guy with magic powers and a zombie army. I don’t know about you but that s$#! sounds right up my alley. Hell, that’s exactly the kind of thing I go to the movies and read comics for. And with the kind of craziness Neveldine and Taylor crank out, (you won’t believe me, but that pun wasn’t intentional) it would have been something alright. These were the guys who brought Crank’s villain back in Crank 2 as a head floating in a jar, after all.

Instead, Neveldine and Taylor’s script got thrown out and rewritten by Will Farmer. The horror elements are pared down to nothing outside of Hex using his resurrection powers to get information on where to go next (and use it to kill Michael Fassbender twice, which was kinda neat) and an appearance by an acid spitting snake man in an illegal pit fight. Said snake man can also stretch his mouth wide, which is visualized through that computer effect from The Mummy. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m so freaking sick of seeing that effect.

That said, I would have loved to have seen the movie that this guy was supposed to have been in.

And so the threat is replaced with something that sounds like it was deleted from the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie from a year or so back, some big six barrel cannon that shoots glowing balls of energy that wipe out entire cities. What could have been a cool little flick is instead transformed into Van Helsing Goes To The Wild, Wild West.

Why did this happen? Well, when this name popped up in the credits, suddenly it became very clear:

Brought to you by the man who thought “Hey, let’s turn I Am Legend into Signs for its last act!” was a good idea.

Seriously, why the hell, after Batman & Robin, do they let Akiva Goldsman near any comic / sci-fi properties? He’s probably done more damage than Paul W.S. Anderson and Uwe Boll combined. Letting him have a say in the production of a comic book movie is like tossing your newborn into a pool of riled up piranhas so they can get a better look. You just don’t do it, man.

So what’s the story? Jonah Hex is an ex-confederate soldier who turned against his commanding officer, Turnbull, after he launches a murderous campaign of terror following the end of the Civil War. Hex ends up killing Turnbull’s son in the process and out of revenge, Turnbull has Hex’s wife and son burned alive and Hex’s face horribly scarred before leaving him to die. (When are villains going to learn that never works?) Hex is found by the Crow Indians, who use some magical ritual to resurrect him, which brings him back to life but also saddles him with all the aforementioned supernatural baggage. Hex tracks down Turnbull to get revenge but discovers that Turnbull apparently died in a fire. You’d think with his Pushing Daisies: Man With No Name Edition super powers, Jonah would resurrect one of his goons, or Turnbull’s supposed corpse and get a confirmation on that. With his vengeance taken from him, Jonah Hex turns to bounty hunting to get by. Years pass, and oh hey, turns out that Turnbull is alive and is stealing the parts necessary to assemble a “nation-killer” super-weapon which he’s going to use to blow up Washington D.C. and kill the President. Seems this super-weapon, which, no lies, is a gigantic six barrel cannon that shoots glowing balls of energy that explode like Michael Bay’s wet dreams, was developed by Eli Whitney. Yes, THAT, Eli Whitney. According to the movie, he was too terrified of the implications of this weapon and its destructive potential to ever build the thing…despite the fact that Turnbull is raiding government storehouses to assemble the different components and to retrieve the 2 dozen or so glowy balls of death it uses as ammo. Whoops.

And yeah, in a moment that practically screams “WE ARE TOPICAL!” we come to find out that Turnbull has been nicknamed El Terrorista by the Mexicans and he even has a couple of his men suicide bomb a train. I wonder if some of those idiots who have Confederate Flag stickers or license plates on their trucks so they can feel special saw that and took great offense at the implication that a proud Southern man would ever stoop to doing what only them freedom hatin’ Ay-Rabs do. In which case, good, cause f&#! those guys.

Now, normally that would be the President’s cue to have his best operatives to hunt down Turnbull, but apparently Ulysses S. Grant is aware who the title character of this movie is and instead demands they just send Jonah Hex to find Turnbull and eliminate him. Cue a lot of “riding through old west scenery” montages as Hex goes to track down any clue he can to Turnbull’s whereabouts. This includes resurrecting Turnbull’s son Jeb but apparently he gets so distracted by settling things with his old buddy that he forgets to ask. Good thing Jeb tells him before he goes back in the ground. I’d like to point out that Jeb is played by recognizable character actor Jeffery Dean Morgan, but despite having one of the biggest speaking parts in the movie (He gets more lines than Megan Fox, honestly) he’s uncredited. Yet important roles like “Boy” and “Dead Turnbull Henchman” are. What the hell?

In his search for Turnbull, Hex will also pay a visit to Smith, a freed slave who acts as the Q to Hex’s James Bond. He’s the one who outfits Hex with all his crazy weapons, like the horse mounted gatling guns you see him break out in the trailer and a pair of pistol sized crossbows that shoot sticks of dynamite. Which really should blow up in his hand if you think about it, but whatever. However, having the two characters meet shows what Smith’s real role in the story, which is to absolve Hex of having fought for the South in the Civil War. He gives this big speech about how Hex didn’t really believe in slavery and so forth and it’s all basically the movie just hastily apologizing for having a Confederate protagonist, rather than using that angle to explore the character any. It’s a stupid, stupid scene and is a prime example of a Hollywood movie telling the brainless masses what to think.

So, anyway, Hex makes his way to Turnbull’s hideout, discovers the Nation Killer and that Turnbull plans to put it on a boat that he stole from some dude (Ghost Rider’s Wes Bentley, who now has another bad comic book adaptation to put on his resume.) and use it bomb the s$#! out of Washington D.C. from the harbor. Hex gets shot and nearly dies again and has this weird, red tinted near death experience where he and Turnbull fight it out in the desert over the coffin of Turnbull’s son. Then Hex is found by what I’m assuming are the same Crow Indians that resurrected him before. They work their mojo on him again and he’s off to Independence Harbor for the final showdown. If you figure this will end with Hex’s love interest being used as a hostage, a big fight between Hex and Turnbull in the bowels of the ship and a narrow escape from a huge explosion, well…


Where’d Megan Fox’s legs go?

…you’d be right.

One thing that’s pretty clear is that Jonah Hex was an R-rated movie chopped down to get a PG-13. Because nothing says movie you can take the whole family to like the story of a horribly disfigured gunslinger hellbent on hunting down and killing a racist terrorist bomber, while taking a quick stop off to have sex with his hooker girlfriend. It was clearly meant to be more violent than what we have here. It’s obvious that the pit fight ends with the aforementioned snake dude eating his opponent’s head and Michael Fassbender gets his head shoved into a boat propeller, yet when you see his corpse, the visible damage is nowhere near as severe as suggested.

But it’s not just enough that they cut down the movie to get a PG-13. I’m pretty sure Jonah Hex probably wouldn’t have made that much sense had they left it alone, but after the editors got done whittling this movie down, chopping it up and piecing it back together, you might as well have put crime scene tape around it. Allow me to point out one head-slapper of an edit. The part I mentioned where the Crow Indians resurrect Jonah Hex again? Well, after performing some ceremony to call him back from the other side, which causes him to have seizures, flashback to his family’s murder and eventually cough up not only spectral smoke that turns into crows but also barf up a live crow. At which point, Hex sits up dramatically and angrily screams “TUUUUURNBUUULLL!”

…we then immediately cut to a shot of Jonah Hex galloping across the plains, set to loud heavy metal music.

W…w…what? He doesn’t rest up for a moment? He doesn’t talk to these guys? We don’t get any real indication as to who the hell these people are? Did Hex just immediately get up and go running through the Indian village, pulling on his clothes and grabbing his gear, all while screaming “TUUUUURNNNNBUUUULLLLL!?” I hope so, because I have an image of that in my head and lordy, is it making me smile.

Then there’s the scene where Hex meets up with his hooker girlfriend Lilah. Not long after they meet, they start to get a little more intimate with each other, the scene fades out and then we’re shown the two of them in bed together. But, then they start making out again and it’s pretty obvious where this is going…and then the scene fades out again and we cut to the next morning. If you’re going to cut out the sex scene why even leave the bit between those two moments?

Honestly, considering how the rest of the movie turned out, I’m not surprised they accidentally spliced in part of Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” video.

And then there’s Jonah’s aforementioned near death experience. Only, as you watch it, you’ll get the sinking suspicion that this dream sequence wasn’t supposed to be a dream sequence. And you’d be right, because before the reshoots, this was the climax to the film. Personally, I would have rather ended this way, since Jonah Hex fighting a guy mano a mano in the ass end of nowhere fits more with what I’ve seen of Jonah Hex than the James Bond “blow up the bad guy’s super weapon before it blows up something” showdown we get. Somebody who worked on re-editing the movie apparently thought so too, because this sequence shows up again, edited into the final fight of the movie! So, for some reason, Jonah Hex is having flashbacks to the time he had a dream about finally getting his revenge on Turnbull while in the middle of finally getting his revenge on Turnbull. Flashbacks to a dream, which by the way, happen to parallel what’s going on in the real fight. *something in brain goes pop…slumps in chair as smoke leaks out of ears.*

Josh Brolin in Sergio Leone’s The Man With No Face!

It’s a shame that the movie around him is such a train wreck because you know what? Josh Brolin makes a pretty good Jonah Hex. And even when you take into account all the changes they made to the character, as far as his personality goes, he’s still the same mean sonnuvabitch we who have read the comic know and love. You honestly wish you could transplant him into a better movie. Really, about the only problem he has is the terrible make up job he’s saddled with, which makes a lot of his dialogue comes out as a gravely mumble. (Number one rule of make up effects: the make up can’t restrict the actor’s performance.) In the comics, it looked like Jonah Hex nearly had half of his face sliced off, here it looks like somebody stuck a big wad of chewing gum on it and left it there.

Speaking of bad make up jobs, there’s a quote going around that one of the studio execs said that the real reason that Jonah Hex bombed wasn’t because the studio stepped in and turned it into a cinematic 20 car pile up, it was because “you don’t take a handsome actor and make him look ugly.” Funny, I saw True Grit this past week. Brolin was pretty ugged up in that movie too and it doesn’t seem to be hurting it any.

Quick thought on True Grit: Pretty good, especially if you like Westerns. The young lady who plays Mattie in this version is going to have a hell of a career ahead of her if she plays her cards right.

So yeah, Brolin does a better job than the material deserved and he’s one of the major reasons why I didn’t think this movie was as apocalyptically awful as other people do. I just wish I could say that same for other members of the cast.

THE MANY FACES OF MEGAN FOX!

Damn, that’s some acting range isn’t it? Please note that the last one is how she reacts to some crazy tattoo freak coming into her room and pulling out a knife only somewhat smaller than Jason’s machete.

Not surprisingly, one of the worst things about this movie begins with word “Megan” and ends with “Fox.” She’s supposed to be a hooker with a heart of gold, a tough firebrand that can hold her own alongside Hex but never do you feel that’s the case. Well, beyond lazy Hollywood shorthand for “Tough Lady”: she kicks guys in the balls a lot. For one, the character is pretty much superfluous, adding so little to the proceedings she could have been written out without changing much. You never really get any sort of indication as to why she’s so in love with Hex that she wants to run away with him, beyond hey, she’s the love interest and that’s what the token love interest does. For another, big surprise, Megan Fox is absolutely terrible. In fact, I’d say this probably the worst performance I’ve seen from Megan Fox. (Contemplate that on the tree of woe, good citizens.) She walks through the whole movie with same vapid facial expression and speaking in the same inflection free monotone, hoping that her boobs looking like they’ll pop out of her corset at any second will distract you from that. Everything about her is so utterly bland and uninteresting I can’t even bring myself to even rip on her unconvincing Southern accent.

But if I DID, I would point out that the individual pictured above has a far more convincing accent than Fox does. Hell, so does this guy:

“SOOKAH IS MAYN!”

Even more inexplicably, is that the movie reveals in the last act that her real name is Tallula Black. What? Now, Tallula Black is a character from the comics. She’s an ex-prostitute with a scarred face that turned to bounty hunting, sort of Hex’s female counterpart. They work together and share the kind of “I can’t stand you / totally want to bone you” dynamic that is the foundation for any good relationship. Here, I just have to ask “what’s the point?” Jonah Hex isn’t exactly a household name and making a big deal out of a reference to an even more obscure character is just going to go over the audience’s head. It’s also doesn’t help that Fox’s character doesn’t really resemble the one from the comic in even the most superficial ways. It would be like if the general in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer revealed that he changed his name from Wyatt Wingfoot. Why should we give a damn?

I wonder if in some earlier version of the script, Lilah gets her face scarred up and she ends up like Tallulah in the comics? She does cross paths with a nutso with knives, after all. Then I guess Megan Fox got cast and the producers decided that no way were they going to ug-up Queen of the Maxim’s Wank Off Fantasies. Who knows.

Also, she ends up killing one of her customers after he buys her from her pimp and tries to take her away by force…and that’s the last we ever see of that particular plot point. I don’t know if it’s the editing or what but when we cut back to her after considerable time has passed she looks like she’s still in the same place and doesn’t seem to be in a rush to leave or anything. Huh? Then again, that may just be Megan Fox’s acting.

Negotiations to cast John Malkovich got a little extreme…

Now if you really wanted to talk about lifeless performances, we’d have to turn our attention to John Malkovich as Turnbull. What we have here is a former general turned supervillain, plotting to bring down the nation with glowing Dragonball Z props. He doesn’t so much as want the South to rise again as to stomp a mudhole in the North. He’s a megalomaniac psychopath who executes people while dropping one-liners and gives speeches about how he will unleash hell on this nation. This is a role that needed…no demanded…an actor that wouldn’t just chew the scenery, but devour it. This performance needed to be so over-the-top that it would make the gods take notice and instead, we get nothing. The only thing that makes Malkovich’s acting here less lazy than his turn in Eragon is that he’ll actually get out of his chair and do things on occasion. No effort, no spark, not a damn thing. Just saying his lines and then asking for his paycheck. What should have been a prime slice of ham is instead completely flaccid.

Hmmm…I think I’ll have me some kittens for lunch.

In short, we needed him to do what Michael Fassbender is doing. Oftentimes, the main henchmen comes across as far more memorable than the lead villain and holy hell, is this a textbook example of it. Really, all Fassbender would have had to do to come off better than Malkovich is act like something with a pulse. Instead, he plays his henchmen with gusto, dancing, singing, laughing, playing with his knives and smiling in a way that makes it loud and clear that this man intends to eat your baby. Sure, he’s just being your standard psycho henchman but you gotta admit, he’s pretty lively about it. And he does die in the appropriately over the top fashion…twice!

So…Jonah Hex. Not a particularly good movie but I don’t think it really deserves the scorn that’s been heaped on it. Worst movie of all time? C’mon folks, this is a year that gave us a new Seltzer and Friedberg comedy, Grown Ups and another Resident Evil movie. This is the decade that gave us Transformers 2, The Fog remake and Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem. Jonah Hex is bad, yes, but I’ve seen worse. It constantly exists in this happy medium between memorable weirdness and mesmerizing incompetence. I actually got a House of the Dead era Uwe Boll vibe from some scenes and though you may think otherwise, I mean that as a sort of compliment. And I can’t really hate on any movie where Mastadon does the soundtrack.

Truth be told, if it weren’t for the rather ho-hum finale, I was prepared to hail Jonah Hex as a new bad movie classic. Shame. I hear there’s a director’s cut being put together that fixes some of the problems with the movie. I don’t know how I feel about that. While this movie has some problems that need some fixing, I can’t help but think that by doing so, you’ll reduce a memorably bungled movie to a forgettable, mediocre one.

And now, to close things out in way that I think the producers of this movie would approve of…with an explosion:

Josh Brolin in Michael Bay’s The Man From Snowy River!

http://scorethefilm.blogspot.com/2010/12/jonah-hex-2010.html?zx=46eb11a1aadcefc2

Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Jonah Hex (2010)

Director: Jimmy Hayward

Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, John Gallagher Jr., Tom Wopat

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Revenge Gets Ugly

Plot: The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again? Yeah.

Why all the hate for this flick? I don't get it. I actually enjoyed it. Sure, it's largely due to Josh Brolin's badass performance. I'm glad to see he's in the new Cohen bros. flick TRUE GRIT (2010) 'cause he belongs in the Western genre. I sincerely hope he does a lot more of 'em. Malkovich isn't doing anything but being Malkovich (ahahahaha) which is just fine because, well, he's reallly good at it and he's fun. I love how he killed 300+ people in a town as they're coming out of church. That kind of behavior is something I dig in movies along the lines of killing children 'cause you just don't see it that much and it takes some guts to put something that edgy in a movie these days.

It's obvious that this character has comic book origins and I really dug the animation showing Hex's origin, the stylized look and lighting of the film. Brolin's face makeup effects are great and he really knows how to sell it. The pacing is really quick to the point that by the time you get to the end an hour and thirteen minutes later (before the credits roll) you need to take a break because it barely lets up. Not having enough time to breathe is not JONAH HEX's biggest problem, though.

Nope. The biggest issue is Megan Fox. See, Brolin's got A LOT of great one liners and he's a good actor so his delivery makes them work. Fox is not a good actor so her line delivery is atrocious. She's terrible and needs to stop. This is the first thing I've ever seen her in and I'll quit while I'm ahead. I don't care how good her t**s look in a bustier, that's not enough reason to hurt your movie and try to sell more tickets. There are plenty of attractive gals out there that can act that deserve a paycheck more than this talentless tramp.

Stop. Just...stop!

I thought Marco Beltrami & Mastodon's rock score worked much better than I would have expected. JONAH HEX isn't a bad movie. Megan Fox is horrible and needs to stop and it could use a couple of nice, slower moments to even it out but other than that, it's fun and not the abomination everyone loves to hate. And that's probably the biggest shame because all of that hate kept a lot of people away from the theaters, including yours truly, which means there won't be any more Jonah Hex adventures...and that makes me sad.

Posted by scorethefilm at 11:18 AM

http://eddiegoestothemovies.blogspot.com/2011/01/jonah-hex-2010.html

Friday, January 7, 2011
Jonah Hex (2010)
Everyone thinks Meghan Fox is hot, I'll admit that I think she is extremely hot but does that translate into whether she's a good actress. Well, let us see as she stars alongside Josh Brolin (No Country For Old Men). She doesn't do a bad job of playing a prostitute who has the hots for Jonah Hex (Brolin), a former Confederate soldier turned bounty hunter with a severely scarred face. Jonah Hex was left for dead after Turnbull (John Malkovich) killed his family and is now trying to wage war against the US. It's up to Jonah to capture Turnbull and Jonah is the right man for the job as he takes no prisoners. The movie also stars Wes Bentley (American Beauty), Will Arnett (Let's Go To Prison), Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire), and Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds) in the film based off of the DC comic. I give the movie a B- because it wasn't the best superhero movie but for the reason that he was different than all of the other usual superheroes. Jonah Hex personifies the idea of the anti-hero and that's what I loved about this film. Jonah Hex lives by his own rules and does what he wants to do whether it's the right thing to do or not.

Posted by The Monster Hour W/ Eddie Monster at 5:53 PM

http://brokentrails.blogspot.com/2011/01/jonah-hex.html

Tuesday, 18 January 2011
JONAH HEX

Yes, well what can I say.
The movie does carry the spirit of the comics and the opening sequences that explain how Hex became disfigured are neatly done.
Anyway, Quentin Turnball (John Malkovich in Cyrus The Virus mode - Con-Air)is the baddie who kills Hex's family and creates the artistry on Jonah's face. Hex (Josh Brolin)becomes a bounty hunter and one who has a bounty on his own head. He has a neat pair of gatling guns on his saddle with which he wipes out a town that has decided not to pay him. Almost a spaghetti western parody.
Anyway to cut an 82 min movie shorter - President Grant offers a pardon to Hex if he can stop a gang from causing mayhem. A gang run by Turnball who had, earlier, faked his own death.

Turnball has a brilliant number two in the shape of a tattooed Irishman called Burke (there is a touch of The Riddler here). Michael Fassbender breathes so much into this character that he stands out.

With the help of the love interest, a prostitute named Lilah (Megan Fox) Hex goes to war in search of a weapon of mass destruction.
As it stands 'Jonah Hex' wasn't disapponting but could have done with some extra scenes just so that characters could really develop. Maybe they will do better with the sequel.

Posted by Ray at 00:52