Jonah Hex

Released by: Warner Brothers
Released on: October 12, 2010.
Director: Jimmy Hayward
Cast: Josh Brolin, Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Will Arnett
Year: 2010
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The Movie:

Sorry guys and gals, but I'm taking this one personally. As a childhood comic nerd through to a slightly less nerdy adulthood, I've been a Jonah Hex fan. Since finding an early appearance in Weird Western Tales in a dingy quarter bin at a local comic store where I grew up, I dug the character. He was more than just a tough cowboy, he was a nasty, crabby sonuvabitch with an interesting past and a strange sense of justice. Having been raised on a steady diet of Hammer and Universal films as well as John Wayne cowboy pictures, it made sense that the character would appeal to me, even if he never found the success that other comic book characters did. He faded into obscurity for awhile and was revived in the nineties by DC's Vertigo line in a few mini-series illustrated by Tim Truman and written by none other than champion mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale and it was in these stories that the character really came into his own. Lansdale's knack for humor, horror and atmosphere was a perfect fit for Hex but despite loads of critical acclaim, once again, Hex didn't really set the world on fire.

This made it all the more surprising then that Warner Brothers made a feature length motion picture based on the character, though sadly what we have here is neither the interesting and mysterious gunfighter of the seventies or the world weary and downright scary old cowboy of Lansdale's update but instead a watered down, bland, boring character made different only by his scar.

The film beings with Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) tied to a cross as he's forced to watch his family murdered at the hands of his commanding officer, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), who is doing this in retribution for the murder of his own son at Hex's hands. Never mind the fact that Hex was trying to stop Turnbull junior from murdering a bunch of innocent people, Quentin wants an eye for an eye. Once he murders his family, he brands his face with the letters QT, but Hex refuses to be marked by that man and later heats up a hachet and carves it out, leaving in its place a nasty scar and a hole in his cheek. This odd appearance and his penchant for always getting his man has lead to a decent career in bounty hunting and an on again/off again relationship with a buxom hooker named Lila Black (Megan Fox) but he puts all this behind him when his country comes calling. It seems that Turnbull, who many believed to be dead, has come into possession of a powerful super cannon and is intent on loading it onto a boat and blowing up Washington, D.C.. Only Jonah Hex can stop him…

From the flashy and completely out of place Gatling Gun opening to the big dumb explosions that pepper the film, very little about this film works well. What made Hex interesting was how grounded he was, how gritty and earthy a character he'd become, and how he interacted with people rather begrudgingly. Brolin, to his credit, does a decent job bringing the character to life, but is surrounded by so much rampant cinematic stupidity and bad CGI that he can't save it. Instead, we're left with a plotless mess of a picture that delivers none of the characterization the story needed and tries to hide it with bad CGI renderings of boats, crows, cannonballs, and talking corpses.

Jimmy Hayward, the man who brought us the big screen version of Horton Hears A Who directs this mess with an emphasis on style over substance but seems to find style only in bad computer graphics and long shots of Hex riding across the landscape (serving as unnecessarily padding for an already mercifully short film). The whole thing is edited in such a choppy fashion that it's almost difficult to follow the film despite its rudimentary and fairly basic revenge story plot. Malkovich is hammy, Fox is foxy but lifeless, Will Arnett is given nothing to do and only Brolin shows anything even close to a spark of 'interesting' as far as the cast is concerned. There are some interesting shot set ups and a good use of crows as harbingers of death (an interesting idea never capitalized on that at least gives us some nice visuals) but generally the film is pretty much a disgrace to the legacy of an interesting and underappreciated B-level comic book character that could and should have been a whole lot more.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Jonah Hex's 2.40.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer runs the gamut from impressive to mediocre and makes most stops in between. Colors are generally nicely defined despite some odd stylistic tinkering here and there and there aren't any problems to report with print damage at all. Some compression artifacts are fairly obvious in a few of the movie's darker scenes, however, and shadow detail isn't all that impressive. Edge enhancement is also noticeable here and there but the biggest disappointment is in the digital noise reduction employed. Brolin's face should be haggard and rough looking, but instead it appears smooth and without any visible pores. The image isn't particularly film-like and the rampant CGI and digital manipulation of the image results in a fairly lifeless picture quality.

The primary audio track on this disc is an English language Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound track, though optional 5.1 dubbed tracks are offered up in Spanish and French with removable subtitles provided in all three languages. Jonah Hex sounds pretty good overall, and there's as much rear channel activity as you might have hoped for given the frequency of the action in the film. Dialogue is never hard to understand and the levels are well balanced. Bass response is strong, meaning those cannon shots have some good punch to them. Generally the movie sounds very good on DVD.

Aside from a static menu and chapter stops, the only extra on this disc is a collection of deleted scenes running 5:11, presented without much in the way of context. They don't add a whole lot to the film or the package. There is a promo for some Jonah Hex Motion Comics (based on the aforementioned Truman/Lansdale series) that plays before you get to the menu screen, but that's an advertisement, not an extra.

The Final Word:

Jonah Hex has been a consistently good and periodically great comic book over the decades since the character first appeared, making this horrible adaptation an even bigger wasted opportunity than it would have been otherwise, despite Brolin's best efforts. Warner's mediocre DVD offering doesn't do the film any favors.