Dir. Jimmy Hayward , USA , 2010, 81 mins
Cast: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Jonah doesn't just have a hex on his character, it appears the hoodoo is also on this latest attempt to propel a niche graphic novel into the mainstream ( The Spirit anyone?). A US box office take of just $10.5million in total, and the quality control curse also known as Megan Jennifer's Body Fox, means that preventing hell on earth seems straightforward in comparison with the task of making this film a success.
Similar in narrative origin, and eventual outcome, to the awful Ghostrider movie, Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin – W ) is the wannabe Faustian fable of a hideously disfigured Wild West lawman anti-hero who can communicate with the dead. Native Americans have imbued him with a gift that saved him from the burning house in which his wife and child perished. Filled with vengeance against those who murdered his family, Jonah makes a pact with the government to track down his former Confederacy Captain, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) and his sidekick Burke (Michael Fassbender), and bring them to justice. Dum-dum-duuuuuuuuummmmmb!
The first thing you must be thinking is, 'Take a look at that cast list! It's incredible!' Malkovich, Fassbender, Brolin, Michael Shannon, Aiden Quinn, heck, even Megan Fox still has some appeal beyond the pneumatic body, doesn't she? Well it's safe to say that if there was an acting equivalent of the Alan Smithee pseudonym that's given to directors when they wish to be disassociated with a movie, then Jonah Hex would be a film starring multiple Alan Smithees. It's not that it's terrible, it's that with a cast list like that, how could it be this terrible?
At 80-odd minutes long it is clearly a film that had some post-production problems. Huge chunks of it consist of montages, some stylishly lifted from Joan Albano and Tony DeZuniga's graphic novel, accompanied by a lacklustre and mumbled voiceover from Brolin, as if to join the randomly placed dots. The most frustrating thing is that at times you can see the promise of a better film amongst the butchered final product.
A blur of cheap looking sets and poorly lit action sequences that never capitalise on the interesting Western locales (where are the high-noon showdowns?), the mediocrity soon blends into a single stream of uneventful action. Despite Brolin's best intentions, the acting consists of the odd grimace and some cringe-worthy one-liners ('I cut myself shaving.') that our pizza faced hero delivers with increasing embarrassment.
Jonah Hex makes John Malkovich's role in dragon fantasy Eragon seem like Oscar worthy acting. But, even worse than that, the fact that it fails on every level must make those involved with The Last Airbender breathe a huge sigh of relief that at least the Shyamalan film won't be the biggest stinker of 2010.
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