Another comic book is on the chopping block of Hollywood and as the drummer rattles his drum a quiet hush falls over the @rcade as the executioner/producer sharpens his bloody axe. The heads of Daredevil, Elektra and the Fantastic Four all lie in a wicker basket. Jonah Hex clears his throat and lays his head on the cold slab…
Ok we are being a little overly dramatic but damn it people they keep messing with our comic books and graphic novels and it isn’t right! Very few comics manage the movie crossover and there have been plenty of casualties and unfortunately D.C.s Jonah Hex is the latest victim!
What’s it about?
Jonah Hex is a former Civil War soldier who now finds himself working as a bounty hunter, carrying the curse of being able to speak with the dead around with him like a tightening noose. It isn’t the life he wanted, he had made a family, settled down but it was all ripped away from him when his former superior officer, Quentin Turnbull, resurfaced to avenge his son (killed by Jonah). Forced to watch his wife and son burn to death and then his face scarred to forever remind him of that night, Jonah was left for dead but somehow survived, healed by medicine men.
At first Jonah focused on nothing but destroying Turnbull only to have his goal snatched away by fate, he turned to bounty hunting.
However when it turns out Turnbull survived, Hex is employed by the US Government to hunt him down and stop him before he is able to put his terrorist (yes you read that right!) plan in action!
Who is in it?
Josh Brolin takes on the role of anti-hero Hex and while he looks the part that is the only positive thing we can say about his performance, Brolin tries too hard and his performance seems to lack any real character. We couldn’t even care about his inner turmoil, why? Because it was pretty obvious that Brolin didn’t care either! Megan ‘Why was I even in Transformers 2’ Fox is cast as the only woman in Jonahs life, Lilah, the slutty prostitute who has feelings for the disfigured cowboy and eyes on more than just his cash.
John Malkovich plays antagonist, Quentin Turnbull and to date it is probably his worst performance. Watching Malkovich in Red was an absolute pleasure but that can’t be said for his performance in Jonah Hex as we attempted to block him from our minds and brain scrub his dodgy hairpiece from all memory banks.
There’s Megan ready to butcher this movie… get it?
However all three actors and their dreadful roles in the movie don’t even come close Michael Fassbender who plays Burke, the sadistic right hand man of Turnbull, an Irish rogue with a love for fighting. His accent is singlehandedly the most offensive, surpassing Julia Roberts and her woeful attempt at playing Kitty Kiernan (thanks Peter for letting us know!) in Michael Collins. If Fassbender is this bad in Hex we can only imagine just how bad he could be in the newest X-Men movie!
What should I watch instead?
X-Men I, Batman Returns, Watchmen
Is it really that bad?
We’ve spent well over two hundred hours this year alone watching movies and it is the only one we’d like to pretend we’d never seen. Our gut was screaming for us to put it back down on the shelf and to pick up the latest Katherine Heigl movie because let’s face it that would probably have given us one or two funny bits! Jonah Hex plays out like a Quick Draw gone all wrong, where there was meant to be tension we found lacklustre and poor performances and what was meant to be a thrilling story (going on the comics), we found ourselves dying a slow death and praying they’d put a bullet in our heads to finish us off with some mercy before the halfway point in the plot!
There is absolutely nothing redeeming about this film, do not rent it, look at it or even think about it. In fact forget we ever even brought it up!
