Hex a Goner
One might think a movie like Jonah Hex would be the perfect writer’s block remedy for someone who has a lot of fun ripping apart terrible films. I thought that, too, after I saw the movie a week ago.
The film is a mess.
Fittingly, so is this review.
Presented here are eight things I took away from Jonah Hex—aside from my first-ever headache brought on by severe puzzlement:
1. “Previously on Jonah Hex...” Truly a marvel of post-modern narrative, Jonah Hex opens with a brief voiceover and montage of Confederate soldier Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) leaving the battle behind after his morals are compromised. The as-yet-revealed conflict led to Hex murdering his commanding officer and friend, Jeb Turnbull (an un-credited Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
Cut to the Hex family cabin, inside which Jeb’s father, ex-general Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) and his posse have trapped Hex’s wife and son. Hex watches in horror as his family burns; Hex is allowed to live, but Turnbull brands his face as a reminder that Confederate soldiers are never allowed to be moral.
Here’s where the narrative trickery comes in: the ensuing credits sequence morphs from live-action into animated comic book panels, with Hex continuing to tell his story—about one or two years’ worth, in fact. He talks about being brought back from the brink of death by local Indians; gaining the power to briefly bring the dead back to life; his quest to hunt down and kill Turnbull’s gang; Turnbull’s mysterious death in a hotel fire; Hex’s decision to become a bounty hunter. It’s as if Warner Brothers had mistakenly released Jonah Hex 3: Great Hexpectations, rather than the first in a (snicker) franchise.
In hindsight, it was the perfect way to kick off this movie.
2. The Tea Party’s Not Over. Are you ready for the biggest character twist since Keyser Soze? Quentin Turnbull’s alive! And he’s cooking up a sinister plot to destroy the federal government during its centennial celebration; he’s developed a machine that uses heated cannon balls and mysterious glowing orbs (which, I believe, were left over from The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) to level towns.
You might think there’s an anti-Tea Party message in Jonah Hex, but you’d be wrong. On one hand, you’ve got John Malkovich wanting to take his country back from that hopey-changey icon, Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn); on the other hand, you’ve got Jonah Hex.
Hex wants to stop Turnbull strictly out of revenge. It turns out the big moral dilemma that forced him out of the military was that he was ordered to burn down a civilian hospital. He’d joined the fight in order to keep Uncle Sam out of his business. In other words, he was kind of ambivalent about the whole human slavery issue, but burning innocent women and children alive would not stand
(Note the irony of several scenes in this movie, wherein Hex burns down a couple of towns and a boxing arena that are filled with people)!
The amount of anti-government sentiment bleeding off the screen was distracting, and I wasn’t sure who to root for. Even Grant and his men were painted as ineffective, noble stooges whose fancy book-learnin’ didn’t mean a lick of spit when it came to solvin’ real Man Problems; which leads to...
3. Will Arnett is in on the Joke. To my knowledge, Will Arnett has never played a serious character; which is good, because I don’t know that he’s capable of doing so. His Gob Bluth character on the Fox sitcom Arrested Development propelled him to fame, and he’s built a modest career playing the same guy: a straight-faced, clueless boob with a husky, weirdly intimidating voice. In Jonah Hex, he plays Grant’s number one guy, Lieutenant Grass.
It’s a completely serious role, essentially the uptight Good Cop who can’t stand his Doesn’t-Play-by-the-Rules new partner (see: Glover and Gibson; Nolte and Murphy; Willis and Morgan). Maybe if you know nothing about Will Arnett, you’ll be able to keep a straight face when he leans into Grant and says, “As you know, Mr. President, my unit is the best.”
This leads me to believe that either Arnett was hoping that this alleged summer blockbuster would be his gateway to beefier roles (Sorry, Will!). Or maybe he actually read the script and figured he’d cash a fat paycheck while watching established actors unwittingly destroy their careers (Way to go, Will!).
4. How Many Zeroes? Those paychecks must have been awesome. How else to explain the top-notch talent that agreed to be filmed in this turd? In addition to the main cast, we see Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon, Tom Wopat, Wes Bentley, and Lance Reddick.
All of these actors have been in amazing projects (yes, I count The Dukes of Hazzard; probably not for the reasons you think), and each of them should know better. Is Jonah Hex the thespian’s equivalent to a Sandals vacation? I mean, sure, after Inglourious Basterds, The Wire, and No Country for Old Men, maybe serious performers want to wind down and make some fluff. But, Jesus, couldn’t they have gone with something more dignified, like a Rob Schneider movie or a Starbucks commercial?
5. You Can Officially Hate Megan Fox. Since she burst onto the scene in 2007’s Transformers, Megan Fox has been universally reviled as a bad actress. I’ve always found this criticism to be unfair and, frankly, the same unfounded, jealous nonsense that’s been spit at starlets since Marilyn Monroe stood on top of that vent.
The Transformers movies were not acting showcases, but I thought she did just fine in them. People who think her performance was bad need to watch more movies; she did exactly what was expected of her. I found her to be quite good in parts of Jennifer’s Body—especially in the scene where she’s being sacrificed to the Devil. She had range, proved that, given the right role, she might surprise people.
I don’t know if her Lilah character in Jonah Hex was that role, but she was absolutely dreadful in this movie. I’m not sure if she was going for 1800’s Southern Prostitute or Stroke-Prone Ingenue, but it’s obvious she didn’t even try. Fuck Megan Fox.
6. Warner Brothers Officially Hates Megan Fox. How else to explain her three scenes? She really only has two scenes, because the third—the middle one—serves only to establish that she’s not the dainty chick you might think she is (which was established in the first scene, anyway).
Lilah pops up randomly and has sex with Jonah Hex; then she knifes a client who gets too frisky; then she turns up in the climax, tied to a boat that’s primed to explode.
Her character is unnecessary outside of the screenwriters’ obligatory Rule of Three (which refers to a scientifically proven rhythm dictating the amount of times a motif can be effectively applied to a story), and Warner Brothers’ need to put a woman on its tent pole movie poster.
7. “Extreme, Unrated ‘I’m Too Hex-y for My Run-time’ Special Edition Blu-Ray!” You know it’s coming. Probably not in mid-August, when the movie will likely hit home video (Hey, it’ll count as two summer movies!); but fifteen years from now, after Jonah Hex has become an Ed-Wood-level cult classic and the subject of reputable film school theses on Mistakes to Avoid in Moviemaking—you’ll see the real 120-minute cut of this film.
Currently, the run-time is listed as 81 minutes, but that includes credits; so you’re really looking at (maybe) 75 minutes of movie. Hopefully, the extended cut will explain some things—like why Michael Shannon rates top-of-the-credits billing for a fifteen-second cameo.
I also hope it’s less terrible.
8. “Executive Producer: Matt LeBlanc” Yep, Jonah Hex was made possible in part by the guy who played “Joey” on Friends. Somehow, that’s cosmically perfect, and accounts for the film’s rampant silliness. From Malkovich’s belief that an 1800’s Confederate general would speak like an effete New York art collector to the trippy flashback where Jonah burns his face with a different branding iron—on purpose—there’s so much weirdness on the screen that I simply must respect its utter failure as a movie.