From moviesonline, In a summer full of remakes and adaptations, you won’t find a film less original than Jonah Hex. Based on the DC comic series of the same name, Jonah Hex is 80 minutes of clichés pasted together into one agonizingly predictable plot.
The eponymous Hex was a soldier in the Confederate army until his regiment was captured and Hex made an unspecified decision that resulted in the death of all his men. Among them was his friend, Jed Turnbull. After the war Jed’s father, Quentin Turnbull, seeking revenge murdered Jonah’s family, branded his face, and left him crucified to die. Rescued and brought back from the brink of death by mystical Indian magic (twice), Hex turns to bounty hunting, convinced that Quentin died in a fire, and cursed with the unnatural ability to speak with corpses. But when the senior Turnbull reappears with a 19th century weapon of mass destruction and dark designs for the Union, Jonah Hex will finally have his turn at revenge.
Josh Brolin plays the title character and easily turns out the best performance of the film. Brolin lends Hex a quiet hateful weariness with the world, which is precisely what the character needs. John Malkovich plays Quentin Turnbull and nearly chokes on his haggard attempt at a southern accent. Will Arnett makes a brief appearance as an irksome Lieutenant to demonstrate Jonah’s irreverence towards authority figures. And Megan Fox plays Lilah, the hooker with a heart of gold, balls of steel, and a Derringer between her tits.
Adapted (loosely) by writing team Neveldine and Taylor (Gamer, Crank), the duo seems determined to create the most mediocre movie of all time. This is a movie written via mad-lib: sliding the comic’s characters into the plot of every single western action movie. Megan Fox’s only purpose in this movie is to get kidnapped in order to lure Jonah to the place where he was already going. He didn’t even know she’d been kidnapped until he got there.
Jonah Hex is the embodiment of everything that critics hate about the summer movie season. A-list actors give embarrassing performances while tightrope walking across gaping plot holes as boobs and explosions punctuate each formulaic turn of the story. In short, Jonah Hex is sure to make boatloads of cash, validating the studios’ enduring contempt for the movie going public.
4 comments:
From ew, The ornery outlaw who lends his name to the disheveled DC comic-book movie adaptation Jonah Hex has a face so scarred that when he drinks, whiskey spills out of a hole in his right cheek. The sight is quite the conversation starter: How the heck did Hex (Josh Brolin) get so ugly? Trouble is, folks'll get to dozing off as the movie answers the question with exactly the kind of nerdy, eye-crossing attention to arbitrary character traits and unlikely relationships that sucks the cinematic air out of so many comic-book movies.
Turns out Hex, a 19th-century bounty hunter suffering from Civil War PTS in a wardrobe purchased at the High Plains Drifter Club For Men, was mutilated by Confederate baddie Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich, sneering and lolling as he adds to his character list of psycho-crazies). Turnbull also murdered Hex's family because Hex accidentally killed Turnbull's own son. Who, don't you know, was also Hex's good friend. Now Hex wants revenge. Which suits President Ulysses S. Grant (Aidan Quinn) since Turnbull has become an anti-Union terrorist. But which bothers Hex's loyal lady friend, Lilah (Megan Fox), a prostitute who clearly enjoys good skin care treatment in the neighborhood of her brothel.
None of 'em merit a fiddle-dee-dee.
Among Hex's talents are the ability to raise a dead man from his grave long enough to have a chat, and the good manners to talk nicely to his horse. Brolin discharges his comic-book duties manfully (if by manful you mean with a perpetual, squint, growl, scar-tissued sneer, and a tendency to peer out below the brim of his hat like a cowboy Princess Di). But the star is done in by the deathless mediocrity of the production, an assemblage of random camera shots, messy editing, redundant scenes, and witless dialogue as haphazardly stitched together as the flesh on Jonah Hex’s face. D+
I really don't like Lisa Schwarzbaum (who did the EW review), but she's probably right about this one.
Nevertheless, "...in a wardrobe purchased at the High Plains Drifter Club For Men." It's a Western, you daffy bitch.
And I thought Megan Fox might actually have something going for her with this. Ha ha, no.
You know what pisses me off? The moviesonline reviewer did something that infuriates me every time a reviewer does it.
First, lots of discussion of about how the movie in question embodies all the worst traits of the form (in this case, the form of "summer blockbuster comic book movie").
Then, a big shrug at the end about how, despite the evisceration performed in the preceding paragraphs, the movie "is certain to make a boatload of cash."
Right. Because we're just all so stupid, right? Those of us who like comic book movies are famously indiscriminate: we can't tell the difference between good and bad, no matter how extreme the contrasts. That's why Darkman did exactly the same business as Spider-Man and why Daredevil is indistinguishable from The Dark Knight. We're just idiots! We don't know any better!
Terminator Salvation and The Hulk (either one) are other examples of terrible movies that were "certain to make a boatload of cash," but somehow didn't. I guess those were just statistical rounding errors.
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