Weekly Review -- Low-cal western
Jonah Hex (2010) -- In the film canon, there are certain genres that can end up being representative of extremes. Either awesomely good or mind-numbingly bad, genres like horror, comedy and comic book adaptations fall into an all-or-nothing area that usually involves a point of no return. For every X2 and The Dark Knight, there is a Batman & Robin and, unfortunately, Jonah Hex is the latter type of attempt.
The title character, played by Josh Brolin, is a vengeful outlaw, who makes a deal with the U.S. military to bring to justice criminal mastermind Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). Turnbull had also murdered Hex's wife and child and left Hex for dead, with the help of his psychotic sidekick Burke (Michael Fassbender), and our hero cannot wait to finally get his hands on both perpetrators. Off he rides, into the sunset, on his journey of revenge and redemption...
... but the audience is hard-pressed to care. The film is an incomplete mishmash of gunfights, supernatural elements, hyper flashbacks and a tinge of a story, none of which come together in a cohesive whole. Jimmy Hayward is not an experienced enough director to take on the task of orchestrating an adaptation of this magnitude. The screenplay was written by the ubiquitous duo of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, those visionary auteurs that brought us such cinematic gold as Crank and Pathology; they are not up to task either, being that their work is not exactly known for subtlety and innovation, two of the things that this film could have used in spades. At a paltry 81 minutes running time, Jonah Hex feels unfinished, underdeveloped and overall neglected.
The actors are mostly better than the film, but even they are unable to elevate the material. Brolin plays Hex with more decorum than is warranted, and Malkovich sleepwalks through the role of his arch nemesis. Fassbender is having a lot of fun with the sadistically playful character of Burke, while Megan Fox is just posing as her bland self, in the cliché role of a hooker with the heart of gold. For some reason, we also get Will Arnett and Michael Shannon, both of whom swoosh through the proceedings in barely noticeable turns.
Jonah Hex is not a great way to spend an afternoon, evening or any time at all. I feel sorry for the fact that so many talented actors were wasted in this mess and that no effort whatsoever was invested into bringing a comic book legend to life with enthusiasm and creativity. Only one question remains -- where, oh where is the Dark Knight when you need him?
3/10
(for Brolin, Malkovich and Fassbender, all of whom have long earned the right to refuse this kind of dreck)
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