Review of Jonah Hex (2010) by Cael M — 04 Jul 2013

Jonah Hex should've been an entertaining, fun western but the poor direction and messy style of this movie ruined all potential that it had. It has lots of great ideas, but in the end, none of them work and it seems like the studio had no idea what to do with them, making the end result seem awkward and out of place. Jonah Hex is about a former confederate soldier named Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) who is scarred by the murder of his family by a man named Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), and has a part of his face burned as a mark to remind him of the event. Jonah Hex eventually becomes a bounty hunter and a gunslinger, searching for Quentin, but when Quentin has a plan to destroy the nation, the U.S. government sends Jonah to confront him. Jonah Hex also has a supernatural ability to "talk to the dead" and gain information about things, such as the whereabouts of Quentin.

I'm not very familiar with Jonah Hex as a character, but Jonah is an antihero from DC comics. I don't know about how well he was portrayed in this movie, but I felt like Josh Brolin did a good job here. I liked his makeup over his face, and some of his lines were decent, but apart from that, he was a bit dull. The rest of the acting here is pretty terrible. John Malkovich as the villain, Quentin Turnbull, was awful and miscast, and it looked like he was bored. His character was completely one-dimensional and had no distinguishing, menacing features about him, making him a very dull villain. He was completely wasted, as well as Michael Fassbender. Michael really didn't seem like he had much to do here, and its a shame because I like Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, and Michael Fassbender. I didn't like Megan Fox, however, and every time she appeared on the screen I cringed. She's only here for her looks, but as an actor, she's embarrassing. Her accent was atrocious and annoying, and her presence alone downgraded this movie.

The plot is also terrible, and the potential that the premise had is completely wasted. The structure of this movie feels so broken and rushed, and the style is dull and tedious. It constantly switches from flashback to present time, and its distracting and annoying. There are lots of unintentionally laughable moments, but not at all in the good way. If the plot and acting (for the most part) is bad, the action must be a redeeming factor, considering this movie should be based on it anyways, right? Unfortunately, no- the most important part of this movie, the action, is awful. There are lots of good ideas here, like hidden machine guns on a horse, talking to the dead, or crossbow guns, but they're all put to bad use. There's even some shaky cam here, too. This seemed like it should've been an R-rated movie, but for some reason, it seemed like the studio edited it down to PG-13, and in the process, messed up the movie. I wasn't bored, but I wasn't entertained either, and if this movie was any longer I probably would've just stopped watching it. Thankfully, it's short, at only about 75 minutes. The music here is out of place too- there's heavy metal music in this western.

Virtually everything goes wrong in Jonah Hex- the acting for the most part, except Josh Brolin (who is only decent) is terrible, the dialogue is abysmal, the plot is messily structured, the music is bad, and even the most important thing, the action, is awful. There are barely any redeeming factors in this movie, and it feels incomplete. It felt overlong even at a short run time of 75 minutes, and every second of it felt tedious. It's not among the worst movies I've ever seen or anything, but there's just really nothing recommendable or distinguishable about this western. Jonah Hex is an unmemorable waste of time that fails to deliver any of the entertainment that it should have. Whether you're a fan of the comic or not, please avoid this movie. I think I'll just stop talking about the movie here, because I've already wasted enough time watching it.