JONAH HEX (2010)

JONAH HEX (2010)

Tagline: Revenge gets ugly

(Western, Action, It Ain’t Natural) [PG]

To burn down a hospital. Your father was gonna kill all those people, just to make a point. I couldn't stand for that. I'm surprised you could.

In this one, we have a former rebel named Jonah Hex who during the Civil War had a major run with a Confederate general named Quentin Turnbull. The General later murders his family and hangs him on a cross after scaring his face badly via branding. Jonah discovers he can talk with the dead after some Indians find him and nurse him back to health. After faking his death, the now disgraced General has gotten some of his minions back together and is devising a plan to destroy the new union. President Grant turns to Jonah who is now a bounty hunter to deal with Turnbull once and for all. 

So back in 1985, DC decided to take Jonah Hex for an 18-issue ride into the future in a comic called HEX. The story was pretty freaking great and I actually liked that run better than all of the original Jonah Hex stories, which are all Westerns. In HEX Jonah goes into a world that is ravaged by nuclear war and ends up fighting mechanic dogs, and giant freakin robots, and falls in love with…Oh, wait. I am doing a movie review here, never mind. In the comics Jonah couldn’t talk to the dead, I think they kind of added that to this movie to avoid making a movie that was just a Western with the Jonah Hex name. It’s an odd choice that I thought really worked to the advantage of this film. Aside from HEX, Jonah did have another time travel adventure where he went to 1985. I guess if you are going to pick a decade to go to, it doesn’t get much better than the 80s. Right, right, we are doing the movie thing here. 

At the box office, this thing was a massive flop. It took in just over $10 million but cost $47 million to make. Megan Fox (TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES) who plays Lilah basically said this was her worst movie and she only signed on because of Josh Brolin, but I can assure you she’s done worse. PASSION PLAY is an example if you feel like taking that thing for a test drive. Oddly this is actually one of Megan’s better roles even to this day. As far as the rest of the cast though, this thing has a bunch of great talents. When Michael Fassbender (X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX) is basically a background character you know you did something right in the casting department. Fassbender is creepy in this as Burke. We also get the likes of Josh Brolin (THE GOONIES) who crushes it as Jonah Hex and John Malkovich (WHITE ELEPHANT) is just okay in the role of Quentin Turnbull. To be honest, most of Malkovich’s performance in this is unconvincing and flat. Then rounding out some more of the well-known cast, Michael Shannon (MAN OF STEEL), Wes Bentley (GHOSTRIDER, Lance Reddick (JOHN WICK 4), and Will Arnett (TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES) in lesser roles. 

I guess I don’t fully understand why this movie got such a bad reception other than perhaps just the fact that purists that were into the comic couldn’t come around to enjoying it. I liked the comic like I said, but I never go to movies to see an exact replica of the comic. If I am going to pick apart this thing a little it’s that Jonah’s dialog is witty enough, the film probably could have slowed down a bit and showed more of Jonah’s internal conflict in the Civil War and his not being okay with slavery and stuff like that. Instead, that is kind of just mentioned in passing, and rather than back story we get some weird scenes where Jonah is just kind of wigging out after basically dying again and then coming back to life. 

What really worked in this thing is the set designs, the action sequences are well choreographed, the pacing is solid and the characters are all pretty vibrant aside from Turnbull as I mentioned. This thing has just enough of the weird stuff I like and more than an ample amount of old-school Western feel for me to have a lot of fun with it. This thing also has a very cool heavy guitar-driven soundtrack, so maybe because it wasn’t Western enough, people didn’t like it? Quite honestly I thought this flick got a lot of undue hate, but it really doesn’t matter at this point. I don’t think we are getting another live-action Jonah Hex any time soon. 

I am going to buck the trend here (as per freakin usual) and give this thing a solid 5 out of 7. It’s a pretty solid flick that feels like a complete story and not part of a story that was going to get finished later on.

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