Previews, reviews and spoilers

http://fulllengthmovies.net/jonah-hex-clips-and-behind-the-scenes-including-a-stripped-megan-fox-interview/


?Jonah Hex? Clips and Behind-the-Scenes, Including a Stripped Megan Fox? Interview

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Jonah Hex? Clips and Behind the Scenes, Including a Stripped Megan Fox? InterviewThis lucky cowboy will be seeing Jonah Hex on Thursday night and should have a review of the film for you all to read Friday before deciding whether or not to saddle up and go see the supernatural western from DC?s All Star Western series in the 1970s.

This film adapt stars Josh Brolin (True Grit) as Jonah Hex (in a scarred version of Clint Eastwood?s the Man With no Name of which there?s an homage in the trailer? ?five coffins? Thinkin? you might need eight?) a traveling anti-hero of the old and wild, wild west.

Maybe my lowered expectations will actually be beneficial, in that I could be pleasantly surprised which, to be honest, I was with the first trailer. it looked pretty cool and the acting seems top notch, something you might not find in a bunch of other comic book adaptations.

1276776034 ?Jonah Hex? Clips and Behind the Scenes, Including a Stripped Megan Fox? Interview

I am especially looking forward to seeing Brolin and Fassbender square off and show their chops. oh, and did I mention that Megan Fox is a prostitute? in the film, I mean. and in the mean time we have a bunch of new clips, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews from the film (some posted below with many more on the sitelet).

Jonah Hex Clip: Train Heist Jonah Hex Clip: Shoot Out Jonah Hex Clip: Did They Search You Jonah Hex B-Roll: #1 Jonah Hex B-Roll: #2 Jonah Hex B-Roll: #3 Jonah Hex Interview: Josh Brolin Jonah Hex Interview: Megan Fox Jonah Hex Interview: Jimmy Hayward

Despite all the much publicized problems (re-shoots, re-scoring and other delays), Jonah Hex still has potential, mostly thanks to the all-star cast that includes Josh Brolin (You will Meet a Tall dark Stranger), John Malkovich (Secretariat), Michael Fassbender (A Dangerous Method), Megan ?is a? Fox (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), will Arnett (Wilde Kingdom) and Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire).

http://www.movie-thoughts.com/2010/06/19/review-jonah-hex/

Review – Jonah Hex
June 19th, 2010 | Author: Marisa Carpico

Short Take: Entertaining but sorely underdeveloped - It could have been considerably better

Director: Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who!)

Screenwriter: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Gamer, Crank: High Voltage)

Cast: Josh Brolin (Milk, No Country for Old Men), Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body, Transformers), John Malkovich (Burn After Reading, Changeling), Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, Fish Tank, 300)

Length: 1 hour 23 minutes

Synopsis: The film begins with former Confederate soldier Jonah Hex (Brolin) forced to watch his wife and son burn to death at the hands of former friend Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich). Left for dead, Hex is found and revived by a group of Crow Indians, but he’s a changed man. Not only does he literally bear a brand of Turnbull’s betrayal on his face, but his travels between death and life left him with some unique abilities. Hex can seemingly survive any number of bullet wounds and revive the dead for short periods of time with a single touch. Hex devotes his life to taking revenge, and when the U.S. government asks for his help in stopping Turnbull from using a powerful weapon against innocent citizens during the nation’s centennial celebration he must find him before time runs out.

Analysis: Jonah Hex is a genre film caught between two desires. The first is devotion to its schlock origins: a DC Comics series from the ‘70s which was itself a rip-off of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns. The second is a drive to question concepts of good and evil, and life and death. It only fully succeeds with the former.

Jonah Hex’s pulpiest and most genre-coded elements come in the form of its basic character types. Hex is a clear homage to Leone’s many bounty hunter characters, particularly Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name from the Dollars trilogy. He will kill anyone as long as he gets his money; he’s the fastest shot around; and he always wears the same stylized Confederate uniform and cloak. His scarred face and dark clothes are meant to mark him as tough and dangerous, but since he is the hero he is also supposed to have a softer, more moral side. The death of Hex’s family and his commitment to avenging them is supposed to humanize him, but the film uses the event more as a justification for his darkness. Reportedly, an earlier cut of the film was supposed to have contained extended sequences in which the ghost of Hex’s wife guides him toward Turnbull but those scenes have seemingly been cut, which is a shame since they might have added some further interest and layering to the character.

Megan Fox’s role as a prostitute named Lilah is mostly responsible for softening Hex’s edges. Hookers with hearts are often used in Western films to add a level of humanity to the lead cowboys, and Lilah is no different. However, rather than act purely as a damsel in distress or as the good woman who does little more than wait for Hex’s return, the character is updated to fit contemporary female action hero ideals. Basically, she can somewhat defend herself and even fire a gun pretty well.

Rounding out the typical cast of B-movie action Western characters are the ruthless villain, Turnbull, and his twisted sidekick Burke. For the most part, both characters exist purely because Western and Action genre conventions dictate so. However, just as with Hex and Lilah, Turnbull and Burke are given some level of variation in an attempt to make the characters more interesting. Burke is little more than a sadistic villain, but the relish and aggression with which Fassbender plays him makes the character compelling. One of the film’s most engaging scenes occurs when Burke comes after Lilah. The way Fox and Fassbender circle each other like wild animals trapped in the same cage hints that Jonah Hex might have been a more satisfying film if it were more devoted to character development than explosions. Turnbull’s complexity comes through his identification as a terrorist; his acts of terrorism seemingly driven by a lingering Confederate hatred of the Union. For example, he tests his weapons on innocent citizens at one point, but his reasons or goals in doing so aren’t fully explained and his actions seem to spring only from his predilection for violence. While there is potential to seriously explore concepts of terrorism and evil through the character, the subplot seems to exist only to heighten the stakes of Hex’s desire for revenge.

Misusing the terrorism concept is just one of the many ways in which screenwriters Neveldine and Taylor squander the story’s potential for deeper meaning. Hex’s character arc, though, is the most obvious failing. Although there is one reference to how bounty hunting begins to destroy his soul, the subject is never explored. Similarly, Hex’s strange connection with the afterlife, especially his ability to revive the dead, offers a number of ways to make the film’s exploration of life and death more meaningful, but the concept is only used in ways that further the plot rather than as a way to flesh out the character.

Emotional weight is sacrificed throughout for the simpler demands of summer action films, so what the audience gets is a film where nearly every exciting development ends with explosions or gunshots. Perhaps if the film had spent more time developing its characters the final scene suggesting the possibility of a sequel wouldn’t seem like a laughable impossibility.

Rating: 6.0

http://www.movienetnews.com/news/review-jonah-hex-is-derailed-disfigured-by-awful-editing/

Review: Jonah Hex is Derailed & Disfigured by Awful Editing
Jun 20th, 2010 | By movie-news

Chopped up. Scarred. Disfigured until the original can no longer be identified. No, I’m not referring to the face of the character Jonah Hex. I’m referring to the movie Jonah Hex, the latest adaptation of a DC Comic. What may have started out as a decent western actioner complete with stylish scenes of explosive action and non-stop violence has most assuredly been whittled down to near nothing, a sad example of a film that borders on the unwatchable.

What we can gather from what’s left of the film intact, the story follows Hex, played by Josh Brolin, a former confederate soldier who is severely scarred and forced to watch his family murdered by a terrorist named Turnbull, played by John Malkovich. After brushing death and brought back by the mystics of an Indian tribe, Hex is now a bounty hunter. Having seen death, Hex is able to converse with the dead, a gift that aids in his seeking out and capturing outlaws. With the aid of a prostitute, played by Megan Fox, Hex’s latest bounty is the very man who made him who he is, the terrorist who is dead set on bringing anarchy to the known world.

Originally, Jonah Hex was to be written and directed by Neveldine and Taylor, the duo who brought us Crank and Gamer. Things didn’t work out, and they walked away from the project after the script had been written. Naturally, Warner Bros went with Jimmy Hayward, the man whose previous, directing credit includes Horton Hears a Who! But, alas, that isn’t where Jonah Hex falls apart. Neveldine and Taylor’s script seems satisfactory enough, full of enough character moments and wall-to-wall action to service just about any level of action fan. Hayward’s direction is stylish and slick. In fact, the production design by Tom Meyer is fairly stellar.

Unfortunately, what ultimately derails Jonah Hex is the editing, both within the confines of each scene and in the structure of the film as a whole. Four people served as editor on Jonah Hex, and I won’t bother to name them simply because there is no telling at this time who is responsible for what. Let’s just say, as a whole, the editing is the biggest problem this film has, and it is so unavoidable it completely ruins anything the film may have had going for it in the first place. There is so much back and forth editing within each action scene, it becomes extremely difficult to tell who is who or what is being done to just about anyone. Explosions happen. We don’t know why. People fly back as if being shot. No one has a gun. These are all jarring moments that quickly take you out of any story that may have gripped you to begin with.

In the broader scope of the film, the editing is much, MUCH worse. Hex is brisked from set piece to set piece with very little instigation and even less establishment. We rarely know where he is or why he’s even there to begin with. Some scenes even seem to be edited together, as if a patch-work of two scenes into one might help move the film along a bit. It doesn’t, and only adds to the confusing mess we already have to deal with. Certain characters and the actors who play them fall victim to this lack of cohesive editing, most notably Michael Shannon who plays a barker at a boxing match. Literally do not blink or you will miss his two seconds of dialogue-less screen time.

The rest of the cast varies in degrees of serviceability. Brolin seems the perfect choice as Hex, and he plays the part with everything he’s got. Malkovich can play this type of villain in his sleep, and he appears to be doing just that here. Fox is horrid, only there for window dressing and as a possible distraction from the fact that her character does absolutely nothing. Michael Fassbender as one of Malkovich’s henchman very nearly steals every scene he is in, and it pains you to think of a better film he and Brolin’s Hex could have been put into to give their violent relationship more weight.

And, ultimately, this is the very thing the editing in Jonah Hex pulls out of the film. At 85 minutes (75 minus the credits), there is an absolute lack of weight to the film. You see the action going on, you witness the violence and the explosions hitting the screen from right and left, but you don’t care. If any film has suffered more from its post-production than Jonah Hex, I don’t believe I have seen it. This film is so unrecognizable from what it may have once been, in fact, that it is impossible to review it based on anything but the horrendous patch job that occurred after it was shot.

Perhaps there will be a Director’s Cut that puts back in all the character developments, all the natural transitions between scenes, and all the meaning of what we are witnessing. As it is, though, we get none of that, and Jonah Hex is left more disfigured and unidentifiable than its lead character.

Jeremy’s Rating: 3 out of 10

http://www.freemoviestheatre.com/blog/jonah-hex-movie-review/

Jonah Hex Movie Review

Empty and far from satisfactory adaptation of a cartoon of the seventies, “Jonah Hex” sabotages its promising main theme and its astonishing distribution in its propensity to want to impress the gallery.

America prepares to celebrate its 100e birthday. For the occasion, the malicious Quentin Turnbull (played by John Malkovich) swears himself to celebrate this quite special day by blowing Washington out of the map! Nobody can stop it, except Jonah Hex (played by Josh Brolin), his sworn enemy who ardently wishes to be avenged after the assassination of his family.

Is the public ready for a new transposition of cartoon? Isn’t the medium already saturated? Especially that lately, the very drinkable “Kick-Ass” was released in the srooms with an enviable success. However, Warner Brothers took the bet to distribute this new title the same day as “Toy Story 3” (which will be probably the most lucrative film of the summer) without taking care to invite the press. No, that does not feel good.

And due. “Jonah Hex” is nothing more than an interchangeable production, worthy of “Ghost Rider”, where an anti-hero without depth nor emotion wanders in a universe graphically neat on large heavy music. The only characteristic is that the whole proceeds at the 19th century. It is however about an awfully traditional western in its codes and its topics, with much of not very spectacular action, of humor (often sexist) which fall flat and an absolutely indigestible pinch of love putting in scene the pulpy Megan Fox.

Some will see there the apology for the mode of Bush. To fight a diabolic being which has weapons of massive destruction, a bounty hunter is recruited, using only disproportionate violence to arrive to his ends. In the pass, the scenario writers decided to sprinkle the intrigue of good universal values, introducing a disturbed prostitute, nice Amerindians and a comrade who fights against slavery. However these elements are only development with the intrigue where the cow-boy prefers being helped by his horse and a dog to be avenged, still and always.

The most clever characteristic of the account is quickly evacuated. The protagonist with faculty to awake the beings of beyond. What could have brought a relevant reflection on death forever place, quite to the contrary. All is treated on the surface, at the speed ofa flash (the feature-length film exceeds hardly 80 minutes) so that a new explosive sequence appears on the screen. Even the brought together actors, generally excellent, do not have anything to put themselves under the tooth. Josh Brolin spends his time to mumble, John Malkovich folds the face with authority, and it is a true shame to join together Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon without anything to offer to them in return.

It does not matter that the realization of Jimmy Hayward (“Horton Hear a Who”) is qualified and that the whole can air the spirit in times of heat wave. Without scenario nor interesting characters, the simple entertainment has much difficulty of materializing. It is unfortunately what arrives at “Jonah Hex”. Go, to the following motion picture!

http://news.suite101.com/article.cfm/a-review-of-jonah-hex-starring-josh-brolin-and-megan-fox-a251188

A Review of Jonah Hex Starring Josh Brolin and Megan Fox

Jun 19, 2010 Dominic Messier

The little known Civil War era bounty hunter from the 1970s pages of DC Comics gets a big screen treatment, with some very mixed results. 2/5

Very loosely based on the titular comic books from the late writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga, Jonah Hex follows the adventures of a hardened and disfigured former Confederate soldier, and how President Ulysses Grant requests his expertise in stopping a dangerous former Army general from destroying the United States.

(Note: For a Suite101 Exclusive Interview with Hex co-creator Tony DeZuniga, click here)

Jonah Hex Brief Synopsis

Hex (Josh Brolin, Milk) spends his days chasing criminals for bounty, all across the Southern United States. At 100$ per head, he usually ensures his clients that he'll find his bounty, no matter where they hide.

Reputed to be a man who rarely misses, Hex is also a source of disgust with most of the people he meets. Having been brutally branded on the right side of his face by a ruthless and bitter former military commander named Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, Changeling), Hex swore vengeance against his former leader, when Turnbull murdered his entire family for the wrongful death of his own son Jeb by Hex's hand.

Having heard of Turnbull's death in a hotel fire, Hex is taken aback when a lieutenant under President Grant's command (Will Arnett, When in Rome) asks him for help in stopping Turnbull (who is actually alive and well, having faked his own death) from using a destructive super cannon which could potentially level any city in the continental United States.

Using an ability to speak with the dead he acquired after having once been near the brink of death, Hex visits some key -- though dead -- members of Turnbull's group (including the deceased Jeb, played by Watchmen's Jeffrey Dean Morgan in an uncredited appearance) in order to track down his nemesis before he can use his doomsday weapon to destroy the country which turned on him during the war.

With some assistance from an old flame named Lilah (Megan Fox, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), and an inventive weapons maker named Smith (Lance Reddick, of TV's Fringe), the vindictive bounty hunter must race towards Turnbull before Washington gets laid to waste.

Jonah Hex Overall Analysis

There are often several problems in bringing a comic book character to life on the big screen. Some writers/directors do quite well at them (see Jon Favreau with Iron Man and Iron Man 2) while others find themselves bogged down into a messy adaptation (see Daredevil or Fantastic Four). Sadly, Jonah Hex falls in the latter category, having very little left to do with its source material, originally seen in DC's Weird Western Tales.

Whereas the original character was simply a bitter yet expert marksman in the vein of, say, Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name", Josh Brolin's incarnation of the Hex character is given a supernatural angle, causing many viewers to groan at the thought of adding a super power of sorts to an otherwise normal yet humanly gifted gunslinger.

Though the reputedly talented action film writing duo of Neveldine & Taylor (Crank, Crank High Voltage, Gamer) put their kinetic spin on a post-Civil War era story, there's just not enough justification in turning your run of the mill Western vengeance story into what ends up looking like a supernatural sequel to 1997's Wild Wild West steampunk actioner starring Will Smith.

Brolin does bring some attitude to the titular character, though the character's distinctive scars make half his witty one-liners difficult to decipher. Megan Fox's girl power prostitute with a heart of gold feels completely extraneous, and was likely included solely for the purpose of attracting legions of fans hoping to see her in a skimpy outfit.

Standout Inglorious Basterds star Michael Fassbender appears as a vicious Irish tattooed thug named Burke, however he overplays the role, turning a potentially dangerous hanchman into a Bond-like farce.

As for John Malkovich, his turn as antagonist Quentin Turnbull is pretty much color-by-numbers, and feels eerily familiar, given his facility with such villains. The true problem here is really the script, with its introduction of necromancy and advanced bombing technology.

Fans of Southern-based TV shows may want to keep an eye out for former Dukes of Hazzard TV star Tom Wopat as Slocum, a retired colonel formerly under Turnbull's command.

The Final Word on Jonah Hex

There's an overall feeling throughout that this film was originally supposed to be longer, given its 85-minute running time. Most of its scenes feel rushed, and one gets the feeling of having walked in halfway through the movie. The film contains enough action and explosions to make it a guys' alternative to seeing a romantic comedy this weekend, but even then viewers may want to settle for the graphic novels instead.

Jonah Hex: 2 out of 5

http://www.primaryignition.com/2010/06/19/jonah-hex-gets-ugly-film-review/

Jonah Hex Gets Ugly – Film Review

* June 19th, 2010
* By Eric

TITLE: Jonah Hex
STARRING: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett
DIRECTOR: Jimmy Hayword
STUDIO: Legendary Pictures/DC Entertainment/Mad Chance/Weed Road Pictures
RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 85 min
RELEASED: June 18

By Eric Stuckart

As the superhero movie train gains steam in Hollywood, we’ve all grown to accept the fact that a good majority of these are going to be the celluloid equivalency of a steaming pile of kryptonite s$#! out of Bizarro’s ass, but every time one comes out, a small part in our hearts hope for something better, something decent to live up to the source material. A lot of times, we end up with Ghost Rider and The Spirit.

While not technically a superhero movie, Jonah Hex, the DC Comics anti-hero of the post-Civil War West has had his fair share of books and graphic novels, and being in the midst of a moderately successful run, someone at Hollywood saw the dollar signs and the wheels started turning. And thus we have Jonah Hex, yet another argument that certain comic book properties are just better off left alone.

The film opens with the obligatory flashback scene that sets up the rivalry between Hex (Josh Brolin), and his lifelong nemesis Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), soldiers in the Confederate Army during the civil war. Apparently Hex, fighting in the war only because he hated the government, brought about the death of Turnbull’s son, so Turnbull returns the favor, making Hex watch the death of his family and scarring his face for being a traitor. He then leaves him for dead. However, Hex survives, hunting down Turnbull until he seemingly dies in a fire. After that, he makes his living as a bounty hunter.

The film centers around Hex being given an offer he can’t refuse: help the U.S. Government stop Turnbull, who ended up faking his death, from using a superweapon to avenge the South’s loss in the Civil War, and all his warrants will be dropped. Despite the appeal of a full pardon, Hex jumps at the opportunity to avenge his family’s murder at the hands of Turnbull, and his heavily-tattooed Irish henchman Burke, played with scene-chewing glee by Michael Fassbender.

All in all, the movie is a mess of one Hollywood trope after the next. The comic is a gritty portrayal of a bounty hunter in the old west who’s badass enough to face death and lucky enough to never lose. The movie gets that aspect down, but like with most films today, the filmmakers felt the need to make things more action-packed, so as not to lose the audience’s attention for too long. There are enough explosions in this film to make one think that Michael Bay might have had something to do with this, and the fact that Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, the co-writing team behind Crank, had a hand in writing this schlock only makes sense. Ten minutes into the movie, Hex is bringing in some bounties to unappreciative customers. To this he unveils two gatling guns mounted to his horse. Later on, he buys dynamite-propelling guns from a secret weapons dealer. Hell, Turnbull’s superweapon consists of a gigantic revolver that shoots explosive cannonballs that are detonated by what looks like f#%@#&! dragonballs. Why such technology even exists in this time period isn’t even acknowledged. It just does, man!

Besides that, Hex makes his motion picture debut as a ghost whisperer of sorts, being able to communicate with dead bodies. Because he brushed so closely to death he now straddles the line between life and death, and is able to communicate with the dead, something that the comic never seemed to touch on…hmmm. Oddly enough, this addition to the Jonah Hex mythology is one of the only well-done aspects in the film. Despite the fact that it was shoehorned in to make Hex more of a proper ‘superhero’, seeing him in action was an interesting and well-played plot point. It’s a shame that the film relied on the SLAM!!!, BANG!!!, BOOM!!!! action clichés too often to really give the film a chance to shine.

The film jumps back and forth, with some poorly thought out dream sequences peppered throughout, and explanations for most of the more confusing plot holes are short to come by. The near-constant jokes regarding his face, kind of making him look a bit like Two-Face in the Wild West, gets old well before they’re done, and many of the scenes are unintentionally funny. The actors mostly seem bored, and I’m not even going to get into Megan Fox’s character, as there’s really only one reason that she gets roles in her films, and if you’re even slightly interested in the comics, this will only just end up pissing you off.

Is Jonah Hex as bad as trash like Ghost Rider? Definitely not. However, viewers will be glad for its short length (85 minutes) when the it’s over, because it’s definitely bound to put a bad taste in most people’s mouths.

RATING: 4/10

http://www.omnicomic.com/2010/06/review-jonah-hex.html

Saturday, June 19, 2010
Review - Jonah Hex

Here is the Hidden S' blurb for Jonah Hex: "Jonah Hex is the Showgirls of Comic Book Movies"-Or, how about "Jonah Hex makes Iron Man 2 seem like Citizen Kane."

Time was that Hollywood churned out great westerns (great, not merely good) with a kind of tedious regularity. Well known films like The Searchers, Shane, My Darling Clementine and Stagecoach are well known to film fans but lesser known films like Pursued, Johnny Guitar, Hondo and the Tall T showcased the strength and durability of this venerable genre through much of Hollywood's so-called Golden Age.

In the last 40 years? Hardly anything. Films like The Outlaw Jesse Wales (1976), Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and Unforgiven (1992) rate as classics, or at least near classics, but that's about it. This highlights another aspect of the decline of the western: time was that every actor felt the call to be in a western. Everyone knows John Wayne and Gary Cooper but there was also Randolph Scott, Jimmy Stewart and other actors who were more associated with film noir work, like Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum, who dabbled in westerns. Since then? Well, Eastwood is the only actor who the public can envision in a western and, more importantly, the only actor that they are willing to pay to see in a western. (I am not counting Brokeback Mountain, by the way, which was not a western in my mind).

Now in 2010 we find ourselves with the Hollywood adaptation of the comic Jonah Hex. Hex is of course the major western themed superhero character in comics. Hex has been around almost 40 years and has always had a strong cult following. His scarred face, Confederate uniform and bitter backstory underlined his anti-hero status in a very visual and very obvious way.

So, what of this film? To paraphrase the Ed Grimley character on the old Saturday Night Live, it's weird how bad it is. The trailer was not that great, but trailers can be criminally unreliable (The Fantastic Four films had great trailers and then...) so I had some hope that this was merely the case. I bolstered my hopes knowing that Hex was being played by a first rate actor, Josh Brolin, who typically picks first rate projects like Milk and No Country for Old Men. I also love John Malkovich, who is often great (although less picky in his selection of roles), and the actor Michael Fassbender has made good impressions in small parts (Inglorious Basterds) and in some high end projects such as McQueen.

What then went wrong? Pretty much everything, but let me focus on a couple of things. One is the plot which concerns (as best I can figure) a plot to attack Washington (on the eve of the county's 1876 Centenial) with a superweapon by Hex' uber-nemesis (a super slumming John Malkovich) and Hex naturally is the only person who can stop him. Even this simple setup is problematic; the writers don't seem to know what Hex actually is: an existential drifter, a wisecracking, post-modern gunslinger, a supernatural agent or a super agent with futuristic weapons strapped to his saddle.

This kind of schizophrenia in a character can be attractive to actors as it can disguise a poorly written role as "multi-dimensional." I am guessing this might have been what attracted the usually reliable Brolin to the role. Other aspects of the film that don't work seem to be the result of shifting directors and a rushed, snakebit production which apparently was like recycled imagery, make it up as you go plot points and sequences that were probably more interesting in theory than execution (the animated backstory near the beginning of the film).

The plot also seems to crib heavily from two sources: The Eastwood Westerns (especially the revenge fantasy Outlaw Jose Wales) and the Will Smith Wild Wild West film from about 10 years ago (both Hex and WWW have President Grant in a cameo role). This dynamic is problematic on many levels as it raises hackles for mining good material to churn out bad (the Eastwood films) and recycles bad material that audiences had mercifully forgotten (WWW). Movie audiences typically carry around memories and they are often deployed in the move going experience. In this case, these memories merely compound the unsavory experience of this film.

So to paraphrase President Obama, "whose ass needs kicking here?" Brolin gets a pass since he was not miscast (not perfectly cast either; Sean Penn would have been a better pick and in some ways Mickey Rourke is ideal) but he was merely unlucky here (he does join a dubious group of actors like Charlize "Aeon Flux" Theron and Halle "Catwoman" Berry who cashed in their Oscar credentials to get saddled with bad superhero films). Malkovich is beyond blame at this point in his career, as he has turned into a kind of post-modern Vincent Price whose florid villainy is always in demand and nobody really expects him to put people in seats (see Ben Kingsley in the Prince of Persia); Fassbender has banked enough good work to dodge the bullet here (and he is nothing more than support here anyway).

I am betting the person who will take the hit here is Ms. Megan Fox (and make no mistake someone will take the hit). This year has been a tough one for Ms. Fox. what with the underwhelming response to the hyped Jennifer's Body and her losing the female lead in Transformers 3 (after reportedly comparing Michael Bay to Der Fuher). I get the sense that the public is tiring of Ms. Fox' print/PR shenanigans, like spinning tales of stalking strippers and basically behaving like a neolithic version of Angelina Jolie. At best, Ms. Fox' impressive torso has been overexposed to a near Lohan-esque level.

Is this fair? Of course not! Ms. Fox is only in the film for a few minutes and she does look better in her 19th century harlot attire than the other actors look in their attire. Why then will she get the blame here? The incorrect and cynical answer is that she is a woman. The true answer is that the production put a lot of faith in Ms. Fox and made her a large part of the film's publicity (despite the fact her's is mostly an extended cameo). This makes sense in the scheme of things since the target audience for this kind of film is a young male who is really, really interested in having Megan Fox as their girlfriend and laughing at gilded butterflies together. To use the Lohan comparison there may be too much free Megan Fox (Maxim, GQ, tabloid shows) to entice fanboys to get out of the house and pay for it.

I try not to get into personal commentary on this site very much since I hate it when journalists betray too much of their own personal history and ruin the lost art of journalism but here goes. I grew up on a ranch and my dad was an attorney but he often introduced himself as a "rancher" when we traveled. This was the absolute truth since we had at any one time 4 or 5 horses on our property and he bred horses and invested in the occasional race horse. However, he got up and went to work as an attorney. My dad took being a horseman completely seriously; he was no dilettante and many times he came home from court to work in the stables, but he was more accurately a hobbyist when it came to horses. Being an attorney helped keep his interest in horses afloat, not the other way around. Not surprisingly, this love of horses extended to love of all things western; film, Zane Grey books, TV shows, western clothing, etc. etc.

The other thing worth mentioning is that there was for many years on my mom's side of the family a rumor that she was descended from the McCandless gang (my grandmother's maiden name was McCandless). Who was the McCandless gang you might ask? Well, western lore has it that Wild Bill Hickcock wiped them out, possibly as a result of their criminal activity but probably just because they crossed paths with the lethal western folk hero.

This kind of cross pollination makes for potent stuff in a young kid and as a result I have always been infatuated with the west in a way that my dad was. Which brings us to this-I am very disappointed that this film will be such a failure as an entertainment and likely as a moneymaker since I was looking forward to seeing a great western with a character that always seemed pretty cool in my young mind. The almost certain failure of this film may stall any kind of western in the near future, especially a comic themed western (most regrettably it will probably at least delay a rumored remake of the Lone Ranger).

Finally, what does this mean for DC comic adaptations in Hollywood? It is not devastating, but it is problematic and definitely a setback. DC's choices for film in the last decade have been odd with stuff like V For Vendetta, Watchmen, Constantine and now Jonah Hex getting to the theater before Aquaman, Green Arrow, The Flash and Green Lantern (I am not counting Batman and Superman). These efforts have been admirable but mild commercial success does not a franchise make. As for the near future Green Lantern is well underway and there are signs that the Flash might be gearing up shortly so these projects are basically too far along to re-think at this point. However, forget, for the time being any comic adaptations of Vertigo style stuff like Doom Patrol, Haunted Tank or Tom Strong. Expect a quick return to the meat and potatoes of the DC universe with amped up plans and rumors regarding the third Chris Nolan Batman and a re-boot of Superman.(Wouldn't Megan Fox make a great Lois Lane???)
Posted by Jonathan

http://www.backofthehead.com/2010/06/jonah-hex.html

Saturday, June 19, 2010
Jonah Hex

Set in the wild, wild west of the Carolinas and Georgia - which the movie seems to think is made up of dusty frontier towns run by corrupt sheriffs who reside in Mexican haciendas - Jonah Hex piles on bizarre contrivance after bizarre contrivance. After a token comic booky prologue breezily establishes the tragic origin of Jonah Hex while simultaneously failing to generate empathy for the character, Jonah Hex darts though its semblance of a story to get to its perfunctory action set pieces, punctuated by right-on-time explosions. On the other hand, Jonah Hex's grasp of American history during the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction is flat out hilarious.

In the White House, with the Washington Monument under construction in the distance, President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn) is warned by his intelligence adviser Will Arnett (!) that John Malkovich is in possession of a super weapon - a "nation killer". The Nation Killer, which surprisingly is not a giant robot spider driven by legless Kenneth Branagh this time around, is a big cannon on a boat that shoots golden orbs made up of whatever the Heart of Lost Island is/whatever will be in Marcellus Wallace's briefcase. A distressed Grant proclaims Malkovich "a terrorist", likely coining the phrase, and decides only one man can stop this dastardly plot against the fragile post-Civil War union: Jack Bau --, sorry, I mean Jonah Hex. Jonah Hex turns out to be the weirdest episode of 24 ever.

Working on the outskirts of the law as a bounty hunter, Hex is a former Confederate solider who betrayed John Malkovich to the hated Union when he couldn't go along with Malkovich's crazy plan to blow up a hospital. In a flashback which the movie keeps flashing back to again and again well past the audience getting the simple point, Malkovich took revenge on Hex by burning his Indian wife and son in their home, then branding Hex's face with his initials ("QT" for Quentin Turnbull, but the nod to Tarantino is unmistakably funny). That isn't how Hex got his grotesque facial scars, however; Hex cut half his face off himself (I suppose so no one would mistake him for Tarantino). It's unclear whether Hex mutilated himself before or after he was resurrected from near death by obligatory Indian shamans, who cursed him with the power to communicate with the dead. Or something. The Indians also save Hex the same way a second time during the movie. No explanation is ever given as to why the Indians keep magically saving this ugly paleface.

The most interesting stuff in the movie are Jonah Hex's ill-defined supernatural powers. Somehow, and Hex himself is never curious about the hows or whys, Hex can communicate with the dead by touching them. Most of the dead souls he interrogates hate him, but he can make them talk by continuing his death grip, which ignites the dead into ash. Later, Hex goes to the bother of trying to interrogate a living person who hates him. Why didn't Hex just kill him and then use his death grip? It would have been more effective and a time saver. Hex also seems to magically attract animals to him for no good reason; one stray mutt loyally hangs out with him and can even outrun Hex's horse despite Hex never feeding him or giving him water.

Hex is also haunted by a dream of his final battle with Malkovich, but in his dream, Malkovich repeatedly kicks his ass. (Hex has some serious issues.) When Hex and Malkovich have their final mano e mano, the movie cuts back and forth between the fight in the dream and the real fight happening on the Nation Killer boat. The constant cutting renders the impact of either fight limp. And what if Hex finally won the fight in the dream but lost the real fight? That would have been weird.

As Jonah Hex, Josh Brolin turns in an genuinely earnest performance. Brolin tries his damnedest to make a strange, one-note comic book character from the little-read pages of DC Comics' Old West three dimensional and interesting. Hex gets all of the focus - the aforementioned flashbacks, voice over narration, an origin story told in comic book panels - to the diminishment of every other character in the picture. Hex's sole purpose for his existence is vengeance on Malkovich, and that's the most thorough motivation of any character.

Malkovich sneers through his stock role as the heavy; his only goal is to "make war". Malkovich sure does talk funny. I don't mean his Southern drawl, I mean his unusual knowledge of the future. Malkovich's men hijack an Iron Horse train at the start of the movie using Al Qaeda tactics like strapping dynamite to their chests. Later, Malkovich gives a speech to his Irish henchman, an unrecognizable Michael Fassbender from Inglourious Basterds, describing the life's work of Eli Whitney where he calls Whitney the father of the "Industrial Revolution". It's never explained what the glowing orbs are, how Malkovich found out about them, or how they ended up in Marcellus Wallace's briefcase.

Jonah Hex completely squanders the talents of his supporting cast. Arnett plays deadly serious, resisting the urge to roll his eyes in his every scene. He gets to experience Commissioner Gordon's frustration of turning his back to Hex, who then mysteriously vanishes; the funniest thing regarding Arnett is how he's disposed of. Wes Bentley (who was the heavy in a much worse comic book movie, Ghost Rider) continues his sad career suicide with two scenes which end with him getting disposed of not as hilariously. Lance Reddick drops in as Hex's Q, offering up high-tech anachronistic weaponry before heading off to Washington to hear President Grant speak on the 4th of July (a speech which is oddly sparsely attended). Reddick mistakenly thinks the Million Man March takes place a century sooner than it does.

By default, the second most developed (ahem) character in Jonah Hex is Megan Fox. Portraying the cleanest and, apparently, the only prostitute in the 19th century who has access to Sephora and Proactiv products, Fox is a Wild West wank fantasy come to life. Fox loves Jonah Hex, purringly urging him during their carefully-wrapped-in-sheets pillow talk to give up his go-nowhere life of bounty hunting. It never seems to cross Fox's mind that her own life of diddling cowboys for dollars doesn't have a future either, nor is Hex a likely prospect for husbandry. But how can Fox not love that face of his?

Despite herself getting punched in the face twice and kidnapped to be used as bait by Malkovich during act three, Fox is no damsel in distress. To establish her tough girlosity, Fox is given a subplot where she kills a client who decides paying her's not as good as raping her. Later, she gamely fights alongside Hex and shoots a half dozen of Malkovich's henchmen dead. I daresay never has a creature like Megan Fox existed in the wild wild west of the Carolinas and Georgia. There wasn't nearly enough of her in the picture.


Fox isn't the only person who can see past Jonah Hex's disfigurement and realizes he's really a stand up fella. President Grant already had a hard-on for Hex even before Hex saved Washington DC from annihilation. Grant is so grateful, he offers Hex a shiny badge and the newly-created position as "Sheriff of America" - I gotta be honest, I laughed my f#%@#&! ass off when that happened. Hex turns the badge down, doing what's best for America, and rides off into the sunset to presumably play little house on the prairie with Fox.

As the credits rolled, nobody in our theater left. They must have all been confused about the Marvel Comics movie strategy of adding a surprise bonus scene at the end. Jonah Hex should have indulged the fanboys and had Hex in a bar get approached by Alan Quatermain or Tom Sawyer with an offer to join The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It would have made as much sense as anything else in Jonah Hex.
Posted by John Orquiola at 2:51 PM

http://www.cinemaverdict.com/2010/06/19/cinema-verdict-review-jonah-hex/

Cinema Verdict Review: Jonah Hex
June 19th, 2010 by Clark Douglas

Jonah Hex
OPENING: 06/18/2010
STUDIO: Warner Bros.
RUN TIME: 80 min
ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
Revenge gets ugly.

Opening Statement
Oh, man. Here I was, fairly certain that The A-Team was the low point of the summer movie season, and along comes Jonah Hex to blast my theory to hell.

Facts of the Case
Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin, No Country for Old Men) is a former confederate soldier turned bounty hunter. His never-ending supply of high-tech weaponry and his abilities to communicate with the dead give him a considerable advantage over the competition; anyone who challenges Hex isn’t likely to be alive very long. These days, Hex has revenge on his mind. His family was murdered by the evil Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, In the Line of Fire) years ago, and Hex has determined to go on a warpath of violence until Turnbull is dead. His mission is not only of personal importance, though. It seems that Turnbull has gotten his hands on a “nation-killing” device of sorts, and unless Hex can find him quickly, endless American lives are going to be lost.

The Evidence
That’s the basic narrative framework for Jonah Hex, an 82-minute disaster so bad that it just about has to be seen to be believed. How could things have gone this badly? I expect there’s an interesting story to be told about the trials and tribulations of putting this film together, as Jonah Hex appears to be the victim of terrible decision-making and brutal post-production tampering. There were reports of re-shoots, violence was cut out to get the rating down to PG-13, director changes, loads of script revisions, soundtrack issues and much more. Good films have occasionally been forged from troubled productions (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford comes to mind), but this is not one of those rare instances. Every problem is painfully evident on the screen, as the film serves less as a motion picture than as a reminder of just what can happen when a lot of second-guessing takes place.

The character of Jonah Hex was created for DC Comics in the 1970s as a reaction to the popularity of the sort of anti-hero western that made Clint Eastwood a star. Hex was essentially an Eastwood imitation; a quiet, gritty, mean fellow who had a tiny sliver of tenderness hiding beneath that rugged exterior. In recent years, the character has been thriving in an exceptionally involving and well-crafted comic book series written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, which delivers effectively bitter little western tales on a regular basis. Adapting any of their stories would have been a better choice than the one the filmmakers made, which was to add a bunch of new elements to the character and place him in a cinematic world that essentially attempts to fuse together elements of Wild Wild West, the James Bond franchise, Pushing Daisies and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

That may sound nifty on paper, but it leads to a disjointed experience that suffers from endless dramatic tonal shifts. One moment the film is an old-fashioned western, the next it’s an outlandish science fiction film. One moment the film is a gruff revenge thriller, the next it’s a jokey slice of camp. You get the idea. Why bother even adopting the Jonah Hex name-brand (he’s certainly not one of the more popular comic book characters) if you’re not even going to make a half-hearted attempt at staying true to what that character is all about? This would have been a forgivable sin if the film had offered something interesting on its own terms, but every “original” idea the filmmakers bring to the table belly flops. Some suggested upon seeing the trailer that Jonah Hex looked like another Wild Wild West. Regrettably, Jonah Hex makes Wild Wild West look like Casablanca.

The thing that makes Jonah Hex particularly frustrating is that it feels like once upon a time, there might have been a halfway-decent film sitting there in the editing room, just waiting to be pieced together. The whole thing has that suspicious “edited for television” feel, with climactic moments snipped out of action scenes and what appear to be the barely-recognizable remains of numerous subplots. For instance, the talented Michael Shannon is giving prominent billing, yet he’s only onscreen for about five seconds (and I only spotted him because I was looking for him). He’s onhand at an illegal fight between a big tough guy and a man who seems to have the ability to attack his opponents with snake venom. We don’t ever learn anything else about the snake guy, either. Stuff like that can be found everywhere. The soundtrack is an unholy mess, with heavy metal selections by Mastadon existing uncomfortably alongside various bits and pieces penned by Marco Beltrami and John Powell.

Truth be told, Josh Brolin is actually pretty good in the title role, convincingly grimacing his way through his scenes and delivering terse one-liners in an entertaining fashion. This is a character who deserves to headline his own movie, to be sure. It’s just that the film that surrounds Brolin is so aggressively bad; it just about kills any sense of goodwill his strong work brings to the proceedings. This is partially due to the fact that the action scenes have a tendency to drown him out (there are moments when you can barely hear what Brolin is saying because the music is cranked up so loud). Megan Fox isn’t onscreen much in her role as a prostitute with a soft spot for Hex, and she doesn’t do much of interest in the role. The supporting cast is quite impressive, and the movie astonishingly finds a way to waste everybody: Will Arnett, Aidan Quinn, Michael Fassbender, Lance Reddick, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Wes Bentley… not to mention the curiously absent Mr. Shannon.

Closing Statement
The film is so incompetent and misguided that one almost starts to pity it after a while in the same way that one might pity a wounded animal. It’s obvious that a lot of people were trying to make a movie that was cool and interesting once upon a time. Alas, after all the post-production drama, what’s left on the screen is nothing short of an atrocity.

The Verdict
1/10

http://www.firstshowing.net/2010/06/19/review-jonah-hex-is-derailed-disfigured-by-awful-editing/

Review: Jonah Hex is Derailed & Disfigured by Awful Editing

June 19, 2010
by Jeremy Kirk
Jonah Hex

Chopped up. Scarred. Disfigured until the original can no longer be identified. No, I'm not referring to the face of the character Jonah Hex. I'm referring to the movie Jonah Hex, the latest adaptation of a DC Comic. What may have started out as a decent western actioner complete with stylish scenes of explosive action and non-stop violence has most assuredly been whittled down to near nothing, a sad example of a film that borders on the unwatchable.

What we can gather from what's left of the film intact, the story follows Hex, played by Josh Brolin, a former confederate soldier who is severely scarred and forced to watch his family murdered by a terrorist named Turnbull, played by John Malkovich. After brushing death and brought back by the mystics of an Indian tribe, Hex is now a bounty hunter. Having seen death, Hex is able to converse with the dead, a gift that aids in his seeking out and capturing outlaws. With the aid of a prostitute, played by Megan Fox, Hex's latest bounty is the very man who made him who he is, the terrorist who is dead set on bringing anarchy to the known world.

Originally, Jonah Hex was to be written and directed by Neveldine and Taylor, the duo who brought us Crank and Gamer. Things didn't work out, and they walked away from the project after the script had been written. Naturally, Warner Bros went with Jimmy Hayward, the man whose previous, directing credit includes Horton Hears a Who! But, alas, that isn't where Jonah Hex falls apart. Neveldine and Taylor's script seems satisfactory enough, full of enough character moments and wall-to-wall action to service just about any level of action fan. Hayward's direction is stylish and slick. In fact, the production design by Tom Meyer is fairly stellar.

Unfortunately, what ultimately derails Jonah Hex is the editing, both within the confines of each scene and in the structure of the film as a whole. Four people served as editor on Jonah Hex, and I won't bother to name them simply because there is no telling at this time who is responsible for what. Let's just say, as a whole, the editing is the biggest problem this film has, and it is so unavoidable it completely ruins anything the film may have had going for it in the first place. There is so much back and forth editing within each action scene, it becomes extremely difficult to tell who is who or what is being done to just about anyone. Explosions happen. We don't know why. People fly back as if being shot. No one has a gun. These are all jarring moments that quickly take you out of any story that may have gripped you to begin with.

In the broader scope of the film, the editing is much, MUCH worse. Hex is brisked from set piece to set piece with very little instigation and even less establishment. We rarely know where he is or why he's even there to begin with. Some scenes even seem to be edited together, as if a patch-work of two scenes into one might help move the film along a bit. It doesn't, and only adds to the confusing mess we already have to deal with. Certain characters and the actors who play them fall victim to this lack of cohesive editing, most notably Michael Shannon who plays a barker at a boxing match. Literally do not blink or you will miss his two seconds of dialogue-less screen time.

The rest of the cast varies in degrees of serviceability. Brolin seems the perfect choice as Hex, and he plays the part with everything he's got. Malkovich can play this type of villain in his sleep, and he appears to be doing just that here. Fox is horrid, only there for window dressing and as a possible distraction from the fact that her character does absolutely nothing. Michael Fassbender as one of Malkovich's henchman very nearly steals every scene he is in, and it pains you to think of a better film he and Brolin's Hex could have been put into to give their violent relationship more weight.

And, ultimately, this is the very thing the editing in Jonah Hex pulls out of the film. At 85 minutes (75 minus the credits), there is an absolute lack of weight to the film. You see the action going on, you witness the violence and the explosions hitting the screen from right and left, but you don't care. If any film has suffered more from its post-production than Jonah Hex, I don't believe I have seen it. This film is so unrecognizable from what it may have once been, in fact, that it is impossible to review it based on anything but the horrendous patch job that occurred after it was shot.

Perhaps there will be a Director's Cut that puts back in all the character developments, all the natural transitions between scenes, and all the meaning of what we are witnessing. As it is, though, we get none of that, and Jonah Hex is left more disfigured and unidentifiable than its lead character.

Jeremy's Rating: 3 out of 10

http://www.tv.com/jonah-hex-so-close-and-yet-so-very-far-away!/webnews/100865.html

Jonah Hex: So Close and Yet, So Very Far Away!
Sheldon A. Wiebe EclipseMagazine.com 06/18/10 06:34 PM

I remember one particular review that I read when Tim Burton's Batman came out. To paraphrase, for the purpose of reviewing Jonah Hex: they got it right: Josh Brolin plays the title character perfectly – writers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor clearly understand Hex and his worldly and otherworldly aspects; the period is as well captured as any good western; John Malkovich makes an excellent villain as the once honorable Quentin Turnbull, and the bones of the story being told are solid. Unfortunately, Jonah Hex has the feel of an R-rated supernatural thriller [which was the original intent] that has been hacked to ribbons in the editing room to make for a PG-13 audience.

To compensate for what has turned out to be an eighty-one minute movie, there is a serviceable narration by Brolin's Hex, through which we learn how he came to possessed of certain supernatural abilities including speaking with the dead and being able to withstand potentially fatal wounds – though he does make it clear he's not immortal, and we see that he occasionally needs a bit help from the Crow tribe [a fact that makes for a potent moment when Turnbull takes his vengeance]. The why of Turnbull's vengeance is also made clear – as is the reason for Hex's actions in that instance. It concerns a matter of honor at a key moment in the Civil War.

Of course, now Turnbull has plans to destroy the country with a new superweapon on the Fourth of July. Talk about your poor losers! And, of course, there's the hooker with a heart of flint – Lilah [Megan Fox] – whose one weakness is, of course, Hex. Then there's the metaphysical brawl between Hex and Turnbull, shot in a surreal world with an almost red sky, that's supposed to mirror their real-life confrontation – though we're given a reason for this connection. Somehow, it all ties together but feels like there's a lot missing.

Michael Fassbender, for instance, plays one of Turnbull's chief henchmen, Burke. The character is tough, mean and obviously loves doing his job. I get the feeling that there's more to the character than cheerful violence, but that's missing. Will Arnett's first dramatic role, Lieutenant Grass seems set to be a solid supporting part that's been whittled to less than two minutes of actual screen time. Even Lilah is short changed – we never learn why she'd be in love with Hex, as she seems to be, or even get a hint to what her story is.

In the end, other than Hex and, to a lesser extent, Turnbull, Jonah Hex is filled with characters who only exist to communicate messages [like Grass], or provide violence [everyone else]. Frankly, Neveldine and Taylor – and director Jimmy Hayward – are the ones who really get the short end of the stick here. The former have shown themselves to be capable of characterization [especially in vastly underrated Gamer], and I can't really see anyone hiring them to specifically write for the PG-13 audience.

It's Hayward who may well have the most to lose here. Jonah Hex looks good and there are some very performances, but I can't believe it was idea to disembowel the movie. Unfortunately, when a movie dos the kind of ignominious death that Jonah Hex is about to die, it's always the director who gets the blame.

As much as I enjoy Jonah Hex the comic, that's how much I didn't enjoy Jonah Hex the movie. So close, and yet, so very far away…

Final Grade: D+

http://www.cinemasoldier.com/articles/2010/6/19/jonah-hex-lacks-the-cool-space-guns-and-rocking-music-of-a-m.html

JONAH HEX lacks the cool space guns and rocking music of a Muse video (review) »
AuthorJeffrey Van Camp DateSaturday, June 19, 2010 1 Comment and 0 Reactions

Rating: (Embarrassing)

Jonah Hex is an 80 minute (less if you don't watch the credits) eruption of Hollywood explosions, dumb dialogue, Megan Fox closeups, and hero-meets-villain confrontations. It's Hollywood's closest attempt at mimicking the Knights of Cydonia Muse video, but lacks the cool space guns and rocking music.

If you don't believe me, see it. There are a few remarkable similarities. The villain (John Malkovich) kidnaps the hero's girlfriend and shoots him. The hero dies out in the woods, but is somehow brought back to life so he can gallop back to save his girlfriend to the beat of heavy rock music and stop John Malkovich from destroying the Fourth of July. If Hex were a feature length Muse video, I'd love it. Sadly, it isn't.
Prostitutes, Confederates, and vigilante justice

Megan Fox is Lilah, a prostitute who enjoys her life one minute and longingly looks into a mirror the next. She thinks she can fend for herself and carries a one-shot pistol. Instead of investing in guns, she should learn how to lock a door. On three separate occasions men sneak into her room and she's always surprised. If you're going to sell your body darlin', use the cash to buy a Masterlock. Also, Megan Fox should learn how to act if she ever wants to play a non-whore in a movie.

Josh Brolin is Jonah Hex, a man who kills bad guys for fun and has lots of high tech machine guns. He used to be a regular joe, but his family was killed by Turnbull, thus turning him into a renegade hunting for vigilante justice. (Give up the grudge, Hex. The Punisher already has this gig.) I've never understood how losing your family would make you want to destroy the families of others in the name of good, but it's routine in comic books. Hex kills people without remorse or really knowing if they're guilty, including his best friend. He's not my kind of hero.

Hex does have superhero powers, but they're limited and lame. He can bring the dead to life when he touches them. I think that's it. He also has a great sense of direction--does that count? Without any research or Google maps, he finds Turnbull's secret hideouts almost instantly. If he can't find them, he asks some dead guy.

John Malkovich is Quentin Turnbull, a former Confederate general who blames Jonah Hex for the death of his family. After killing Jonah's family and scarring his face, Turnbull fakes his own death and started plotting the end of the world. Pretty standard stuff. I mean, why kill Hex if you can leave him alive to one-day wreak vengeance upon you? It's more fun to let him go. Like a good bad guy, Turnbull loves to leave loose ends in the name of villainy.

Anyway, Turnbull found the plans to create a top-secret super weapon, invented by Eli Whitney. It turns out that after inventing the cotton gin, Whitney was recruited by the military and invented a ton of weapons for them, revolutionizing warfare as he did farming. I'm not so sure about his secret weapon though. It's basically a giant Gatling gun. Instead of bullets, it shoots canon balls. Here's the trick: the canon balls are really bombs, and after shooting all six, the thing shoots a computer generated dragon ball, which explodes and ignites them all in a hellish blast of CGI.
Hellish blasts

Speaking of hellish blasts, there are a lot of them in Jonah Hex. Nearly every place Hex visits turns to Hollywood dust within a couple minutes. A town blows up, a train blows up, another town blows up, a submarine blows up, a ship blows up. Lotso things be detonatin' in this here picture. Ya kids like explosions, don'tcha?

If you like the repetitive discharges, you'll love the hero-meets-villain scenes. Jonah Hex and his nemesis Turnbull confront each other no less than four times in 80 minutes, and that's if you don't count Hex's hallucinations, where he is also fighting Quentin Turnbull. Every time Hex is about to kick the General's ass, the Confederate weasel sneaks out! The best part is at the end, where Jonah is fighting Turnbull in real life and his dreams at the same time. Double the Turnbull, double the kick-ass.
Do It Again, Do It Again

Jonah Hex might as well be four episodes of a lame Saturday morning kids show. I've seen worse films, but few that repeat themselves so often. It's a Steely Dan wet dream, without the fantastic guitar and keyboards or awesome beard. Hex forgets characters, ignores logic, and mimics better movies. If it did this in the name of fun, I'd be more forgiving, but the only tongue-in-cheek humor here is the kind the studio's marketing department is dishing out. Still, coming from the writers of Gamer, a horrible movie starring Gerard Butler, this is a definitive step forward.

I wonder how good actors continually let themselves get stuck in such bad films. Do they realize midway through production that they're making a mockery of themselves? Do they put on a pretty face anyway? John Malkovich, Josh Brolin, and Michael Fassbender are good at what they do. They should fire their managers. I can't imagine going from starring in No Country for Old Men, W., and Milk to Jonah Hex. Good move, Brolin.

http://www.dailyactor.com/2010/06/movie-review-jonah-hex/

Movie Review: Jonah Hex

June 18, 2010 by Lance Carter

Here’s how to determine if you’ll want to see Jonah Hex:

Do you like the DC comic it’s based on?
Do you like Josh Brolin?
Do you like explosions?
Do you want to kill 80 minutes of your life?

Then you will most likely want to see Jonah Hex. Everyone else, stay home.

Josh Brolin stars as Jonah Hex – a civil war veteran turned bounty hunter with mystical powers that allow him to talk to the dead.

There’s nothing really spectacular about the film except the name actors that appear in small roles. I’m not talking about Megan Fox as his love interest Lilah or John Malkovich and Michael Fassbender as the villans. I’m talking about Will Arnett, Aiden Quinn, Lance Reddick, Michael Shannon and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.

Good actors right? But what the heck were they doing in this movie?

Will Arnett and Aiden Quinn were in 3 scenes. Lance Reddick – 2 scenes. Jeffrey Dean Morgan – a whopping 1 scene and Michael Shannon? I don’t even remember seeing him in the movie.

Maybe all these guys were fans of the comic? I’m betting not.

Hey studios, save these small roles for actors who need the work. They were good in the parts…but with small roles like these, it brings you out of the movie. Hey, that’s Will Arnett. Is that Jeffrey Dean Morgan? You expect them to do more and when they don’t, you think – why were they in the movie? Maybe their scenes were left on the cutting room floor? I don’t know. I don’t care. I just wish it would stop.

I give this movie a D+. Josh Brolin was really good and like I said, it was really short.

Oh, and all the best scenes are in the trailer.

http://www.jarcrib.com/2010/06/19/review-jonah-hex/

Review: Jonah Hex
Posted on June 19, 2010, 4:21 am, by jar.

Thanks for checking out our Jonah Hex review

Genre: Action Comic Book
Directed by: Jimmy Hayward
Staring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett
Released: June 18th, 2010

THE GENERAL IDEA

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.

THE GOOD

Josh Brolin NAILS Jonah Hex so well. His presence, personality, kickassery. All of it. He plays off the stoic and grouchy man on a mission perfectly. They couldn’t have asked for a better man to play this part. But one man won’t win the whole game for you. Its a team effort. This team should have been traded.

There is a lot of fluffy action and some one liners that make this movie fun at least in that aspect. For the popcorn quality of it, there are enough fisticuffs, gunfights and explosions to make you pay attention. But that’s all it has going for it aside from the perfect performance of Josh Brolin.

Oh, and the opening credits are actually pretty well done.

THE BAD

Ok… are you comfortable?

First off, every good adventure movie needs a good villain, and while the motives and actions of the villain are well thought out, John Malkovich is misserably terrible at portraying him. Yes, I get the reasons why he does what he does, and he honestly thinks he is doing the “right” thing in the processs, but never once is he an appealing personality or presence. In the end he is just the badguy and inconsequential. He is there because we need a badguy. Completely missed out opportunity with an actor who does know better.

Megan Fox was certainly eyecandy, but they could edit the movie without her in it and it would be no better or worse. She just didn’t matter. Her acting is about what we expect, and she does look like a whore. I just wish they didn’t involve her as the sidekick. Unneccessary.

And now I know that this is supposed to be an alternative western based on a comic book, so its not going to be traditional. But the comic played the supernatural IN the Wild West and didn’t screw around with the setting. They took the other stuff and brought it along with a traditional world and it worked. Having the high tech weaponry that simply did not exist back then (dynamite crossbow might as well have been a grenade launcher) distracted me, and the rock music was the steel toed boot that fully kicked me straight out of the setting. Dammit that made me think that it was pretty much a modern era movie that took place in a Civil War re-enactment fantasy camp (many of the extras were in fact re-enactment enthusiasts)

And the pacing of the movie is erratic. When its up, it bangs right through. But the buildups are just not there, and most of the impacting plot points just have no impact. Some things are left vague for later explaination – which if used should be used to some effect or big relveal but instead we just get a “oh, thats what that was” uneventful reveal.

Oh, and I might be wrong, but not once does anyone call him Jonah… its Jonah Hex. Every time.

The supernatural element was also unimportant. They could have ignored the whole “talk to dead people” thing completely and replace it with a living snitch and the plot is the same.

OVERALL

The light plot, wasted villain, The Fox Standard, disfunctional era setting, bad soundtrack, and one perfectly played hero.

If you turn your brain off for this, its still not that much fun. Not completely terrible, but for me it wasn’t worth the drive to the theater.

I give Jonah Hex a 4 out of 10 for brain-off popcorn stuff, Fox’s corset and mostly Brolin’s presence

http://ryanjdowney.blogspot.com/2010/06/movie-review-jonah-hex.html

Friday, June 18, 2010
Movie Review: "Jonah Hex"

JONAH HEX
Directed By: Jimmy Hayward
Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox
1 Star

How the heck do you screw up Josh Brolin as a gruff anti-hero, great comic book source material, Mastodon doing most of the score and Megan Fox in a corset? Look no further than "Jonah Hex," which manages to shamelessly squander all of the above with gusto.

Working as a bounty hunter in the post-Civil War South, Jonah Hex (Brolin) is a Confederate veteran who lost everything at the hands of an evil General (Malkovich) whose orders he refused to obey. Granted the supernatural ability to talk to the dead during the near-death experience that earned him an atrocious facial scar, Hex can survive multiple gunshots but is easily knocked unconscious when the story demands it. We see him resurrect dead people to have conversations multiple times, without the movie ever addressing why he doesn't pull the same trick with his murdered family.

And that's just the beginning of this movie's problems.

Doing his best Christian Bale as Batman voice and his worst Clint Eastwood in every Western squinting, the normally reliable Brolin is hamstrung by a complete lack of characterization, story or anything else resembling a real movie.

In case you thought "Jonah Hex" would be more "Deadwood" than "Wild Wild West" (the best hip-hop sci-fi Western, to be sure), The Evil General is building an Impossible Super Weapon. Does Hex stop him? Well, first he has to make eye contact, so Malkovich (sleepwalking as a bad guy without a back story) can yell "Kill him!" at his disposable soldiers.

And then Hex has to have a battle, and then a final battle, with the Evil General's top henchman, an Irishman (with tribal face ink... Tons of those in the South) played by a bowler hat wearing and Crocodile Dundee knife wielding Michael Fassbender. Fassbender manages to be the only almost interesting thing in this movie, other than the scene where a Crow crawls out of Jonah Hex's mouth during a Native American resurrection ritual (makes even less sense when you see it).

So isn't Megan Fox as a hooker with a heart of gold, in a corset and garters, enough to make this movie bearable? Nope. She's barely in the picture and when she is, she isn't really... You know, acting. Hey, I enjoy looking at her as much as the next guy, but if she's going to be more than a celebrity or model, she needs to show us some chops. And thus far, she hasn't chosen any material that would allow that.

How about that score by Mastodon? It isn't bad, but it's very misplaced, mixed way too loudly and generally just really distracting. I almost put in earplugs at the screening. And I love Mastodon! But covering story holes with droning instrumental metal isn't movie making, even when it's written and recorded by a great band.

With a running time of less than eighty minutes without the credits, there are plenty of blink and you'll miss them "performances." Remember when Wes Bentley had a promising career? He's in the movie for two scenes: the one where Malkovich threatens him and the one where Malkovich kills him. Will Arenett, as a military man, is impossible to take seriously. It's an SNL sketch, or "30 Rock," whenever he's onscreen playing serious. Maybe he can do dramatic, but this wasn't the place to find out.

Brolin is supposed to be a big meanie, but we sympathize with him. He lost his family, he's sarcastic, he kills awful people, he hates the government. What's not to like?

To add insult to injury, "Jonah Hex" lacks the confidence to even let the "anti-hero" be a real Confederate veteran. They make sure to shove in a scene with a Black Friend. And just in case that alone didn't get the job done, the Black Friend then proceeds to (inexplicably) point out to Hex that he knows he only fought with the Confederacy because he hates government interference (Tea Party shout-out!) and not because of slavery. Thanks! I love when filmmakers explain things to us dumb moviegoers.

Don't bother with back stories for any of these people, or any kind of rulebook for the supernatural or superpowers. Just make sure we know the Confederate anti-hero doesn't have a racist bone in his body, even in the post-Civil War South. Whew!

I can't believe I'm about to type this (Mastodon! Western! DC Comics! Megan Fox in a corset! Talking to the dead! Crows!), but "Jonah Hex" is the worst movie I've seen this year. Yes, it's worse than "Letters to Juliet."
Posted by Ryan J. Downey at 11:15 AM

http://graciepooh.com/movies/movie-review-jonah-hex-june-2010

Movie Review: Jonah Hex (June, 2010)

Director: Jimmy Hayward
Screenplay: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Release Date: June 18, 2010
Actors: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Michael Fassbender
Based on the comic book character of ‘Jonah Hex’

Site Update: I’m falling further and further behind on my reviews. But, having returned from vacation recently, and being dried of any movie watching, I’m hoping to be back on the ball. I forget to also review old movies I’ve seen recently.

Onto Jonah Hex. I saw the Jonah Hex preview at the Warner Brothers panel when they were at Comic-con last year, in which it debuted to a fairly lukewarm audience. At the time I was disgusted by the number of useless and not very interesting questions directed at Megan Fox, and nothing really about the comic or the movie itself. What little I did see of the previews (and they were not even very clear as to what Jonah Hex was to be about) I was not very impressed.

Because of this, and all the not-so-very-interesting trailers of the movie, my expectations going into the film were very low. Usually, when I have low expectations going into a film, I’m usually pleasantly surprised. Not so here.

So, what is the story about? Jonah Hex is based on the DC Comics of the same name. Without having read the comic, Jonah Hex is a bounty hunter, an anti-hero, that protects and avenges the innocent. Due to a disagreement of whether or not to take a course of action that to him, was immorally wrong, Jonah kills his best friend Jeb Turnbull, which in turn, makes Jeb’s father Quentin (who was a general at the time) very angry. Quentin takes it upon himself to kill Jonah’s family and kills them in front of Jonah. Years pass, and Quentin supposedly dies. Jonah, after years of acting under his own rules, is hired by the US government to track down and kill Quentin, who is now found to be alive and also a terrorist to the USA. Jonah, happy to take revenge for his family, attempts to track down Quentin.

Because Jonah Hex is based on a comic, there are a few liberties that the film takes that brings the story out of reality into fantasy. The plot is not well fleshed out, and even though there are a few funny wry one liners delivered by Josh Brolin, it was not enough to interest me or even care. As a revenge film, it is very weak. Two better ones come immediately to mind. The recent Edge of Darkness, and my all time favorite revenge film - Oldboy. Next to Oldboy, Jonah Hex is a deflated balloon, lifeless, buoyed by … nothing. Not even the likes of Jeffrey Dean Morgan or John Malkovich could save this script. The chemistry between Megan Fox and Josh Brolin seemed non existant, and though Megan Fox’s character was brought in to establish that Jonah did indeed care about someone, one scene does not make the relationship between the two characters believable.

The story could have been more more dramatic, or, more stylistic if that was what they were aiming for with the dry one line humor. Instead, they majorly failed. I would avoid this movie and wait for a Netflix download if you really are wanting to see this. The biggest problem here, is the screenplay. Even with the best actors, Jonah Hex would have fallen flat. The script is unbelievable, none of the characters are relatable. It’s hard to feel for Jonah Hex’s predicament when we barely know anything about him. Yes, it sucks that his wife and child are killed, but besides the normal reaction to human pain, why should we care about HIM? Due to this major problem, an 80 minute movie felt almost two times long.

As such, I will not recommend the movie, unless you have to catch Megan Fox scantily clad in her tight Barbie fitting attire (and I must say, I was flabbergasted at how hourglass like her figure is, with her waist looking like it was 13 inches in one of the scenes). I was also pleased to see the cameos done by the seemingly-always-likes-to-play-dead characters Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Denny from Greys Anatomy, Clay from the Losers) and Lance Reddick (Agent Broyles from the excellent Fox series Fringe), but disappointed at the same time that it was for such an awful movie.

Avoid. 1 terroristas / 5 terroristas

http://themovieencyclopedia.blogspot.com/2010/06/on-fourth-of-july-united-states-of.html

Friday, June 18, 2010
On the Fourth of July, the United States of America will know HELL!
Hello I am the movie encyclopedia and if no one else will see it, I will.

What do you get when you mix an obscure DC comic, rip out all the good parts, put in a decent cast, add Megan Fox, get rid of the gore but keep the explosions, add amazing special effects, a short running time and an underwhelming feeling of meh? You get the bitter and grainy smoothie known as Jonah Hex.

Before getting into the movie let me give you a little back story on Mr. Hex. Jonah Hex first popped up in 1971 in All Star Western #10 and Batman #237. He wasn't really a character more than a full ad with a few panels of dialogue. Jonah later made his debut in Volume 2 of All Star Western #10. Jonah dominated the All Star Western series up until #38 upon which Jonah got his own comic series that lasted 92 issues. He was cancelled in 1985 but returned later in a series called Hex, which moved him to a post apocalyptic world. Since then he has been popping up randomly on the DC radar, with new issues or graphic novels coming every couple years or so.
Well in 2000, Fox got the rights to develop a one hour film based on the character but that was quickly scrapped until 2007 when Warner Bros. Pictures bought the rights to the character and subsequently a film adaptation. The original people behind the one hour special stepped in to produce and oversee things with the directing duo of Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine (of Crank and Gamer fame) set to write and direct the film. In 2008, despite Tom Jane practically begging for the role, Taylor and Neveldine cast No Country for Old Men's Josh Brolin as the main character. Later that year Taylor and Neveldine stepped down as directors but left their screenplay as is. Warner Bros. searched high and low for directors and eventually settled on Jimmy Hayward, an animator who worked on Reboot as well as many Pixar films who made his directorial debut with the film Horton Hears a Who.

Eventually they hired the rest of the actors and all throughout 2009 they shot, re shot, and re shot again the film until it was finally finished and edited and sent for distribution. Now the film has arrived and boy howdy is it a mess.
I'll get into the plot in a second, or whatever you want to call it, but first I want to address one major gripe: did the studio drop this film on the way to Warner Bros? This isn't a joke but a serious question. It's like the editor had chopped the film up piece by piece and put it in the can and let Warner Bros decide what to do. That person must have dropped the film and film spewed everywhere, leaving him to put random things in and go off. I say that because this is a 70 MINUTE FILM! And it's pretty obvious by the end of it that a LOT of things are missing. I have a feeling the DVD will be twice as long as the theatrical cut. I think this is partially due to the PG-13 rating but my theory still stands.

Basically though the plot is Jonah Hex is a Civil War soldier whose family is killed and is left scarred by his arch rival Quentin Turnbull. Jonah then gets supernatural abilities to bring people to life for short periods of time as well as having "one foot in Hell at all times." He also has a bunch of tricked out weapons and whose only friend is a prostitute named Lilah. Quentin returns claiming that he will H-Bomb (or some kind of weapon to that effect) DC and that Hex is the only one who can save the day.
That plot would seem decent but this film has very little explanation for anything. Motives, how people got what (weapons, money, supernatural abilities) and basic characteristic exposition is totally missing from this film. Why do we care about Lilah? Why does Jonah? Why do we care about Jonah? None of that is answered. His family's death is very brief and you never see him with them before the attack, just after. You are given no reason to care about any of the characters and the motives and reasonings behind them all are skewed and totally head scratching. On top of that, you are given no breathing room due to the abnormally short running time.

Besides a total plot fail, this film does okay otherwise. The effects are really good and the explosions are definitely pretty. The facial makeup looks good and the backgrounds, scenery and costumes all look really good and authentic. The actors sans one are also pretty good. Brolin does a good Hex and is a believable badass. He mumbles a lot and almost has a Boomhauer voice mixed with Ron Pearlman snarl but you can see that he is trying really hard to save this film. So are all the other supporting cast members like the misplaced Will Arnett, Jeffery Dean Morgan, Wes Bentley, Michael Shannon, Michael Fassbender and Tom Wopat. They all try really hard and for the most part they are all pretty good.
The one major acting blemish is of course Megan Fox. Her Southern accent is laughable, she has no stage presence, she is extremely wooden, has no talent and is basically there for eye candy. She really brings down this otherwise good cast. To her credit you can tell she is trying but that's like telling a one legged dog to run.

The plot is non existent, full of holes and head scratching issues, the dialogue is terrible and Megan Fox can't act. The other actors and the effects are pretty but that can't really save this film. It's not an abomination to cinema but this is a very hard film to recommend.

MY VERDICT: AVOID IT

PS: Yes I purposefully only put pictures of Megan Fox. She's the reason a good 90% of people are seeing this. So I just saved you money...you're welcome.
Posted by TJMAC510 at 12:55 AM

http://chasemebaby.com/thethrill/?p=12883

Jonah Hex ::: Refried Movie Review!

Since we haven o time & can’t be bothered with going to see another film where Megan Fox displays just how bad an actress she can be. We have cut & paste a portion of a Review by : The Washington Post. You can read the Review in Full by Clicking here!!

As the prostitute Lilah and Hex’s love interest, Megan Fox, the buxom hottie of “Transformers” fame, will appeal to the same lad-mag crowd that “Jonah Hex’s” crunching hard-rock score does.

Michael Fassbender (“Inglorious Bastards”) makes an interesting-enough villain as Turnbull’s tattooed Irish henchman, Burke. Though, truth be told, his fights with Hex only serve to prolong the story unnecessarily.

As for the title character, Brolin has a suitably embittered, hard-boiled presence. Most of his acting, however, is done by his facial prosthesis, a gruesome-looking hole in his right cheek, courtesy of Turnbull, that has left him with a mouth that doesn’t quite work. No matter. There’s nothing of particular importance in the dialogue, which largely consists of such schoolyard taunts as “Is that all you’ve got?”

From the sounds of the reviews & the looks of the trailers this is a (REDBOX $1.00 renter) LOL!

http://www.jayflix.net/2010/06/jonah-hex.html

6/18/10
Jonah Hex
Graphic novels (comic books) are considered reliable source material for Hollywood these days. No longer interested in Superman's stodgy old standards ("truth, justice and the American way"), they have ramped up the grotesque, ramped up the horror, and ramped the blowie uppie stuff WAAAAY up!

Action fans really enjoyed the gun fights, the knife fights, the hatchet fights, the sword fights, and even got a look at a post Civil War Weapon of Mass Destruction! Aaahhh, cartoons....

The characters and the actors who played them include:

* Damaged hero, played by Josh Brolin ("No Country for Old Men"), a scarred, grieving, monosyllablic bounty hunter, has a horse named "Horse" and a mangy dog he hasn't given a name. He was brought back to life by the Crow Indians, so he can "talk to the dead" (you really don't want to see it!).
* Dastardly villain, played by John Malkovich ("Burn After Reading"), who made our hero watch as his wife and child were burned to death, then branded him on the face. Oh yeah, he's the one with the WMD. Nice guy....
* Gleeful henchman, played by Michael Fassbender ("Inglorious Basterds"), who loves having power over his victims.
* Hooker with a heart of gold, played by Megan Fox ("Trans- formers"), who believes in a LOT of concealed weapons.
* President Grant, played by Aidan Quinn ("The Eclipse"), who knows the disgraced Jonah Hex is our country's only chance....

I enjoy sardonic humor, but bottom line... Did I like it? Not so much...
Posted by Jayflix at 4:14 AM

http://www.knoxville.com/news/2010/jun/17/jonah-hex-jumbled-mess/?partner=RSS

'Jonah Hex' a jumbled mess

Rick Bentley, McClatchy Newspapers
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Megan Fox as Lilah and Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex in the action adventure "Jonah Hex," based on a DC Comics series of the same name.

Jamie Trueblood

Megan Fox as Lilah and Josh Brolin as Jonah Hex in the action adventure "Jonah Hex," based on a DC Comics series of the same name.

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images and sexual content

Length: 81 minutes
Released: June 18, 2010 Nationwide

Cast: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Producer: Akiva Goldsman, Andrew Lazar
Writer: John Albano, Tony Dezuniga, Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Suspense/Thriller
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures

"Jonah Hex" has more problems than the film's tormented central character. It's a confusing and poorly-shot adaptation of a minor comic book story that feels days longer than its scant 80-minute running time.

Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is a bounty hunter asked by President Grant (Aidan Quinn) to stop post-Civil War terrorist Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). Hex is up to the task since it was Turnbull who murdered his family and left him with a horribly scarred face.

In a plot that feels like it was originally planned for "The Wild, Wild West 2," Hex must stop Turnball from leveling Washington, D.C., with a massive new weapon.

The script by William Farmer, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor is a jumble of supernatural elements, a love story and selective bits of the comic book. None of the parts are developed enough to be interesting.

It would have helped if Hex's origin hadn't been reduced to a cheesy animated sequence at the beginning. The Batman, Superman and Spider-Man back stories are such a part of pop culture there's no need to rehash them. But "Jonah Hex" isn't a big part of comic book culture. The film should have been lengthened to reveal more about Hex before he became such a man of mystery.

The convoluted script could be why Brolin looks like he's sleepwalking through the movie. His stiff acting is only made worse by the makeup he wears to portray the scarred hero. He sounds like he's doing a bad "Sling Blade" impersonation.

Megan Fox plays the only person Hex can confide in, a gun-totting prostitute named Lilah. "Jonah Hex" suggests that prostitution must have been a great profession in the 19th century - Lilah clearly has the best dental plan of anyone in the movie.

Studios are always looking for the next great comic book-inspired franchise. It won't be "Jonah Hex."

http://screwtopreviews.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/one-hacked-up-mess/

One Hacked Up Mess

The character of the “mysterious stranger” has been around for a lot longer than films have. The term has been used to describe far too many people too count. This could be said of characters as old as the eighteenth century Christopher Syn to the modern day water cooler joke, David Blaine. But when the “mysterious stranger” from this film rides into town, people will stand up and take notice. My guess is it’s probably because half of his face is dripping onto his collar.

When the Civil War confederate hero Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) decides that he has seen enough death, he is confronted by and is forced to kill his best friend, Jeb Turnbull. He now lives quietly with his wife and son in the swamps of the South. Hex is assaulted by Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) the father of his late friend, who is now crazed with vengeance for the loss of his son. Turnbull hangs Hex on a cross and forces him to watch as he burns his family alive. He brands his insignia on the side of Hex’s face as a permanent reminder of the man that took away everything he loved. Ironically, Turnbull soon after dies in a house fire quashing any hopes Hex had for taking his own pound of flesh. Strangely, years after, Turnbull has returned from the dead unharmed. The revenant now seeks to destroy the United States. Fearing his nation’s destruction, the President calls on the one man who could bring down the terrorist. This man is the bounty hunter with warrants on his own head, Jonah Hex.

Apparently, DC Comics does not remember the catastrophe that was Constantine because they have brought back all of the same ideas in this film. Jimmy Hayward, director of Horton Hears a Who, took an anti-hero bounty hunter from the days when cowboys could be in comics and changed it up until it was what he wanted. The original no-nonsense character with a bad attitude has been butchered just as much as Josh Brolin’s face. The story is now riddled with elements of Native American mysticism and steampunky alternate histories that make little to no sense at all. These underlying themes are not only confusing but also vague about how these modern technologies can happen in a post Civil War era. What a shame that all the credibility Brolin has earned with such films as “W.” and “No Country for Old Men” will now be sullied by this farce. Joining Brolin and Malkovich were such actors as Wes Bentley, Michael Fassbender and the woman who seems to be the cinematic “Black Spot of Death” Megan Fox.

This “weird western” has the feel of Artemus Gordon but with the supernatural vengeance of Blade. The old comics used to begin each issue by stating that, “Jonah Hex only has two companions in this world. One is death itself. The other was the acrid smell of gun smoke.” By the end of this movie I almost wanted to makes friends with some gunsmoke.

http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2628696

Jonah Hex stumbles from start
Posted By KEVIN WILLIAMSON, QMI AGENCY
Posted 1 day ago

As weird and mangled as its anti-hero's grimace,Jonah Hexis what happens when the writers ofCrankmeet the director ofHorton Hears a Who.Ask yourself: WouldLady and the Tramphave been better if directed by Sergio Leone? WouldLonesome Dovehave been improved if penned by Dr. Seuss? And why are the scribes ofCrank(andGamer)still working?

Questions that, had they been asked while theHexscript was being hammered out, might have spared all of us -- filmmakers and audiences alike -- from the bombastic, baffling, frenetic yet wooden result. How did it all go so wrong? How it is possible for any movie to seemingly borrow fromUnforgiven, Wild Wild Westand TV'sPushing Daisies-- all at the same time?

While the unfortunate prime culprit must be director Jimmy Hayward, it's undoubtedly unfair to blame a fiasco of this scope on a single individual. After all, there's the issue of whether or not Jonah Hex, the long-running, oft-cancelled DC Comics western outlaw, should have even received the big-screen treatment.

It's a shame, certainly, for its star Josh Brolin, who is enjoyably grizzled as Hex, a ruthless bounty hunter still haunted by scars -- both internal and external -- left from the American Civil War.

Hex, who receives a chance for revenge and redemption when he learns the man who slaughtered his family, Confederate colonel Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), isn't dead, as he had believed.

Further muddying matters are Hex's largely unexplained supernatural powers -- he has the ability to communicate with the dead, bringing corpses back to lurching life -- and Turnbull's acquisition of a "super weapon" that can level entire cities.

Not surprisingly, the movie's tone is similarly conflicted, veering from comedy to drama to romance, as we're introduced to Hex's love interest Lilah (Megan Fox), a hooker with -- wait for it -- a heart of gold.

By the grinding climax, the film is smash-cutting between a showdown on a ship, and Brolin and Malkovich brawling in some kind of red clay under-verse, intended, I think, to represent the nether world between this life and the next. Whatever. All I know is, the end couldn't come fast enough.

- - -

Jonah hex

http://idlehands1.blogspot.com/2010/06/toy-story-3-vs-jonah-hex.html

Friday, June 18, 2010
Toy Story 3 VS Jonah Hex
It's the comic book bad ass VS the toy store terrors! The pugilistic plastic puppets VS the wicked waylaying westerner!! LET'S GET IT ON!!!

Jonah Hex - Jonah Hex (Brolin) is a man haunted by the death of his wife and child at the hands of the insidious Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich). Scarred horribly by Turnbull and left for dead, Hex is saved by friendly Native Americans who yank him back, inches from the here after and thus, changed by having seen the other side. Now, Hex can communicate with the dead with a touch and roams the dusty trails as an outlaw bounty hunter with a taste for a prostitute named Lilah (Fox) and a scar across his mug you’d never forget.

The rest of this tale is either irrelevant or makes no sense. Hex believes Turnbull to be dead, which is reversed minutes later; a pointless plot fact since we all know Turnbull is the main bad guy before we even enter the theater. Hex’s “talking to the dead” gimmick stands as the only pleasing effect in the whole film but things revealed during these moments, while pushing Hex toward the bad guy, seem forced and could have been easily replaced with some bar drunk pointing in the right direction…but what fun would that be?! The dialogue falls out of actors mouths with the pacing of a sub-par community theater performance, as if they were all told to sit down and watch Silverado before the shoot as their only reference. The result is agonizing with a series of peripheral characters standing around like civil war reenactors or those odd puppets in the Hall of Presidents, pitching their lines at main characters who seem to yawn back at them.

SPEAKING of acting! While watching Jonah Hex, you’d think the film was shot in a single week with actors given 2 days to read the script and cue cards to cover the rest. Brolin’s mangled mouth piece assures most of his lines are delivered through gritted teeth, rendered unintelligible. This makes his scenes with Megan Fox extra hysterical, as her delivery is extra mumbly with a sort of drawl, which isn’t to be confused with a southern drawl. She just drawn her words out and makes every word sound gnarly. It’s not sexy. John Malkovich slow walks from scene to scene with the intensity of someone performing a task they were talked into by a cousin who nagged them for a solid year. I’d swear he doesn’t change his facial expression even once and delivers his lines with a softness you reserve for ordering desert after a pleasing meal. This leaves Michael Fassbender as the maniacal, heavily tattoo’d Burke who dances through every scene and twirls a giant knife as if he studied the art since childhood. Fassbender seems the only person behaving as if he’s in a crazy, comic adapted western with super natural overtones and comes off more like a Robocop nemesis than cohort to Turnbull, who is most likely sleeping somewhere behind him. Special mentions should be given to Wes Bently and Will Arnett who are so miscast and odd, even with the small roles given, that they may as well be in a Saturday Night Live skit spoofing the movie. Finally, a tip of my hat to Tom Wopat (yes, that Duke boy) who acts his ass off despite the stupidity happening around him and succeeds in proving he deserves more movie roles.

80 minutes feel like 2 hours as this dull fantasy rolls along with lame, unlikely action, horrible writing and zero atmosphere. If you consider a red tinted “dream sequence” that replays throughout the film as cutting edge cinematography, then I suggest you partake in any one of a number of the SyFy channel’s “original” movies and save some cash. When I saw the names Neveldine and Taylor come up in the credits as screen writers I nearly yelled LIAR!! This complete mess of a film could not be the work of the guys who brought us the Crank films and Gamer. Jonah Hex lacks the quirkiness and risk taking that is the backbone of those films. Jonah Hex has to be a hack job and after cutting the meat to ribbons in an attempt to form a coherent story line, we are left with 80 minutes of sweaty boredom, laughable action gimmicks and an “ultimate weapon” that will remind the more geeky among us of the Dragon Balls from Dragon Ball Z. They, too, make no sense.

I went into Jonah Hex with very low expectations, my Spidey senses telling me this may hurt a bit. I left rubbing my eyes, shaking myself awake for the ride home and muttering curses to myself. Save yourself the agony and skip this movie all together.
Posted by Paul Nomad at 3:27 AM

http://auteursandovations.blogspot.com/2010/06/jonah-hex-2010.html

June 18, 2010
Jonah Hex - 2010
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Writers: Mark Neveldine & Brian Taylor
Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Michael Fassbender

Confederate-soldier-turned-bounty-hunter Jonah Hex (Brolin) embarks on a quest for revenge when a Union lieutenant (Arnett) tells him that reports of the death of Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich), the man responsible for killing Hex's wife and child, have been greatly exaggerated.

I gave this movie a chance. I said to myself, "Josh Brolin and John Malkovich are both really good actors, so I'm willing to put up with a scene or two of Megan Fox." On top of that, it's based on a DC Comics character, and with the recent success of the Batman franchise, you'd think only the most skilled hands would be associated with similar properties. So who gets this tale of vengeance? The guys who are responsible for Crank, and it shows. Too much focus on the action, not enough on writing a solid, cohesive plot. Oh, and the movie lasting less than 90 minutes? That didn't help at all. I liked Brolin's portrayal of Hex, Malkovich made a good "I'm better than everyone else" character as per usual, and the pseudohistorical (think Wild Wild West-type weapons) aspect hit more than missed, but it wasn't enough to make the movie worthwhile. Above everything else, though, was the dialogue. Most of it wasn't terrible, mind you, and I laughed once or twice, and heard a decent line here and there. It was next to impossible to understand! Seemed as though because Brolin was hard to hear through his facial prosthetic (Hex is scarred, for those of you unfamiliar with the character), some of the other actors decided to mumble at his level to make it seem less unusual. Wait to rent the DVD, and make sure you have the subtitles on.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/06/17/1507566/jonah-hex.html

Jonah Hex'
By BETSY SHARKEY
Los Angeles Times
Posted: Thursday, Jun. 17, 2010

LOS ANGELES There are few truths to be found in the smoldering ash heap that is "Jonah Hex," but here are the ones that matter: John Malkovich is responsible for the Fourth of July fireworks tradition (who knew?); Megan Fox looks better fighting in a bustier than tight white "Transformers" jeans (no-brainer); definitely consider a cosmetic surgeon to deal with those unsightly facial scars, don't get in a pique and try to do it yourself (duh).

This latest DC Comics transmogrification into mega-action mess stars Josh Brolin as Jonah, a bounty-hunting latter-day saint with an ax to grind and a face that even a mother couldn't love (see cosmetic surgery tip above). The film is director Jimmy Hayward's ("Horton Hears a Who!") first go at live action and there is promise in all the fire and brimstone raining down, just no soul in the souls the devil went down to Georgia for.

Set in the aftermath of the Civil War, "Jonah Hex" is an apocalypse story of betrayal and redemption that burns its way through D.C., the Deep South and the dusty West. The till-death-do-they-part battle between good and evil pits a renegade Confederate colonel named Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich) against a vengeance-hungry Jonah. At stake is more than old grudges - the very future of these newly united states hangs in the balance.

Basically Jonah shot Turnbull's son and some other Confederates who started blowing up civilians rather than Union soldiers. Not one to turn the other cheek, Turnbull murdered Jonah's family and seared his QT brand into Jonah's face as a reminder that he "destroyed everything you ever loved," or something like that. It's not easy to forget the sentiment because Malkovich delivers the line so many times you wonder if he just never got the script revisions.

Ah, the "script." Writers Neveldine & Taylor, who I gather aren't using their first names to protect their families' reps, have found a way to turn biblical references into bad dialogue at head-turning speed while making 83 minutes feel like a lifetime. I guess with "Crank" and "Crank: High Voltage" as a training ground, it was to be expected.

In the comic book tradition, the story weaves between the real and the mythical, but it's a very boozy trip. Brolin's intermittent voice-over narration proves to be the most powerful stuff, with the rest curiously sputtering. Case in point: Jonah's caustic one-liners fall dead because their target has already bitten the dust - it's just no fun if you can't see the guy react to being dissed before he's deceased.

The look of the film is great, though visually there are three distinctive streams that Hayward has trouble meshing. There is the stark graphic comic book style that is used to good effect in the beginning when Jonah is filling us in on why he's so mad. The style that dominates the film is a sort of spaghetti western wrapped in worn leather and dusted by grime, that is by far the best; and finally a surreal-scape of dry red river beds and scary dreams, which look evocative but are just not right for this movie.

Of course the biggest effect is Jonah's face, with half of it Brolin's ruggedly handsome scruff, the other a swirling crater of skin with a hole that exposes very bad dental hygiene. I guess it's a good thing that Fox's Lilah, a sharp-shooting hooker with a crush on Hex, didn't find it as distracting as I did, or some of the fights would have gone on even longer.

Malkovich, who does malevolence so well, is strangely flat as the villain. All would be lost without his No. 2, the devilish Michael Fassbender as a tattooed crazy Brit named Burke. He takes care of most of the hand-to-hand combat with Jonah and brings the fire needed to fuel the bad guys and inflame his adversaries.

That is not an inconsequential skill, since he who controls the fire controls the action in "Jonah Hex." Cities burn, people burn, circuses burn, boats burn. The government's secret new weapon of mass destruction that Turnbull has stolen and Jonah has been conscripted to recover is a molten sphere that turns ordinary cannonballs into great balls of fire. But this is one film even Jerry Lee Lewis couldn't save.

Betsy Sharkey: betsy.sharkey@latimes.com

JONAH HEX

MPAA rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, disturbing images and sexual content

Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes

Playing: In general release