Bullet Points: Jonah Hex
Released in 2010, Jonah Hex combined a few of my favorite elements into one single movie. It’s a comic book movie featuring a Civil War vet/bounty hunter who can speak to dead people and has a wicked scar. It sounds like a really rad idea. The biggest problem might have been that it’s not a “hard R” movie that it should have been. Deadpool and Logan was still several years away so it’s no surprise that Hollywood would be afraid to pull the trigger on Jonah Hex but if you’re going to try to make a movie with bounty hunters and Civil War terrorists and no one even says a bad word… you’ve earned your low IMDb score.
Synopsis: The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth.
- Jonah and the war: Hex is an officer in the Confederate army but they mention a couple of times that he isn’t into the whole idea of succession from the Union and even less thrilled about slavery. I’ve heard that before. John Carter of Mars was the same way and you could say that both of these films underperformed like crazy. I wouldn’t necessarily blame it on the background of the hero in both movies but it is kind of interesting.
- The end of the war: Hex ends up having a change of heart towards the end of the war. It causes him to kill his best friend, go against his own unit, and then create a feud with the one man who is determined enough to take away everything that Jonah loves in this world; his buddy’s dad, General Quentin Turnbull. John Malkovich plays Turnbull and he does so with a fantastic amount of malice but he could have used a few more minutes to talk about his evils before actually doing any of them. If anything, Turnbull was too quick to act on his terroristic feelings instead of doing what a good James Bond villain would do in talking about it for 30 minutes.
- Seriously, bro: The thing that really grinds Jonah’s gears is when Turnbull makes Hex watch as he burns down his home with all his family inside. Then he brands his face with his shitty initials and leaves him for dead. What ends up happening is that Jonah is found by those wacky Crow Indians and the medicine men bring him back from the dead. It means that he now has the ability to speak with the dead…for some reason.
- “War and me took to each other real well”: Josh Brolin is really good as Jonah Hex. The problem is that the character of Hex isn’t really good. He has very little to him, to be honest, and Brolin is forced to make something out of nothing but playing him as cool instead of the tortured soul that he should be. Imagine watching Brandon Lee in The Crow and instead of brooding and telling stories about his lost love he porks the hottest hooker in town and drops one-liners on the bad guys. That’s what happens here.
- Not the Wild Wild West: Even though the story comes very close to the Will Smith Wild Wild West movie, this one is a tad bit different. Yeah, US Grant sends both men on a mission to stop a Confederate madman with high-tech weapons from destroying cities full of civilians…okay, maybe it’s closer than I thought. I’ve always thought that the Will Smith movie was super entertaining so I’m not that mad that the movie is essentially getting new life with Jonah Hex.
- Jonah, his horse, his dog, and a shitload of crows: It doesn’t take Hex long to find Turnbull and even less time to figure out what he’s up to. Eventually, Jonah’s favorite hooker gets caught up in the mix and Turnbull threatens to kill her in front of him just like he did with his family. There is a brief flashback sequence where we meet his dead family but like most of the movie, very little time is spent on it. If anything, the movie could have shoved an extra 15 minutes into it and gave us a little more of development.
- The Finale: Turnbull has a ship loaded down with his mega weapon and is about to blow the hell out of Washington D.C. but Hex infiltrates the ship and starts going to town on all his lackeys. Megan Fox only has about 9 lines in the entire movie but she isn’t a complete waste of space since she’s very hot and even kicks some ass in the end. The Turnbull/Hex throwdown could have been more fulfilling but most of that is because the film needed to be rated R instead of this PG-13 business.
It might be a short movie but there is more than enough time for some Bonus Bullet Points:
- There must be a Dog Whisperer type out there who is training horses to answer to a man whistling. Is there anyone out there that can confirm that horses can learn something like this? I’d like to know for a friend at my local racetrack.
- Does Megan Fox even get time to clean up before the next dude comes in?
- Of course Jonah’s weapons guy is a former slave who now makes cool-ass guns. He also travels an amazing distance to get to D.C. for the centennial. Oh yeah, and dynamite crossbows!
- Michael Fassbender is in this. I had no idea. His character was probably my favorite one. He does a lot with the little time that he’s given and makes for a good foil to Jonah.
The Verdict: I had a surprisingly good time watching Jonah Hex. I expected that it would be total crap from everything I heard but it was entertaining and the actors were all pretty good. Most action movies with 82 minutes worth of content don’t cram so much action or this many characters into it, though. I think this movie could have been made better with another 15 minutes or so of development of the Hex and Turnbull characters. Hex never got an opportunity to grieve for his family and Turnbull barely got to be the murderous bastard that he needed to be to drive the story forward. The relationships are all rushed and most of them feel very forced. This one would have been much better as a Netflix series, in my opinion. Despite all of its flaws, it was a short, fun movie and I had more fun with it than I expected.
