Susan Granger’s review of “Jonah Hex” (Warner Bros.)
Based on a legendary antihero from a DC Comic series that dates back to the 1970s, this savage action/adventure Western is a prime contender for Worst Picture of the Year.
Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is a Louisiana Civil War veteran whose family is deliberately incinerated by Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), a former colonel in the Confederate army who blames Jonah for the death of his soldier son, Jeb, who served in the same unit. Not only is Jonah forced to watch his wife and child scream in agony but Turnbull and his sadistic henchman (Michael Fassbender) mutilate his face, hideously disfiguring him. After enduring this near-death experience, Jonah is revived by friendly Indians and emerges almost invincible with a creepy, supernatural ability to ‘talk’ with the dead.
Propelled by a need for vengeance, anguished Jonah becomes a vigilante/bounty hunter, toting a tomahawk and 1873 Colt in one holster and a Remington conversion in the other. There are twin Gatling guns attached to his horse, along with a crossbow rigged to shoot sticks of dynamite. So when it becomes obvious that crazed Turnbull is planning to overthrow the United States government in Washington during America’s centennial, Jonah is recruited to track him down by President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn), who says, “The very fate of our nation may rest on Jonah Hex.”
Meanwhile, above a New Orleans saloon, resides Jonah’s only friend, a prostitute named Lilah (Megan Fox), whose claim to fame is an astonishingly corseted 20” waist.
Working from a pulpy screenplay by Brian Neveldine & Mark Taylor (“Crank,” “Gamer”), along with William Farmer, director Jimmy Hayward (“Horton Hears a Who!”) favors style over substance with no clue how to bolt together the fragmentary story and create the suspenseful tone necessary for a graphic novel except to blast Mastodon’s heavy metal score.
Clocking in at a mere 82 minutes, including closing credits, it’s intolerably tedious. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Jonah Hex” is an awful 2. Everyone connected with this abomination should hang their heads in shame.
