Review: Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex is a movie adaptation of the graphic novel by DC comics by the same name. On paper it seems to have a lot of ingredients to a fun summer action blockbuster. I know a few people who are even excited to check it out. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s a hard rock western tale of revenge with lots of explosions and a seasoned cast. What could go wrong?

Well, unfortunately everything went wrong. I’m hard-pressed to come up with any redeeming qualities for this movie other than the fact that its running time is not much over an hour, so at least it ends. That’s a good thing, and knowing that was the only thing that kept me watching. The one thing I enjoyed here was Michael Fassbender’s performance as ‘Burke’ – the antagonist’s Chief henchman. His performance tries to redeem the film and does the best with what he has set before him.

It wasn’t even bad in an ‘oh my god this is amazing! Did you see that part? What were they thinking?!’ sort of way. No. It was just bad in a banal, forgettable, and inexplicable way. What a disappointment. I don’t it’s worth watching even if for free. And I’ll willingly watch a lot of bad movies, being able to find redeeming qualities in almost anything.

To summarize the movie it’s suffice to say it’s Wild Wild West crossed with The Crow. Forget that though because you don’t need to follow character motivations or story line anyhow since every scene is an island. The potentially most interesting scenes are left for voiceover work or on the editing room floor. It might make sense if I point out that the writers also penned Crank (which, by the way, I loved!).

The action is confusing and poorly cut. The editing is nonsensical and suspect. The music is out of place. The dialog is absurd. The set and wardrobe design are passable but that’s more or less it. The production has all the set pieces but they can’t seem to get them in order and do anything with them. It’s as if they got half way through production and the budget was cut with them being told to ‘hurry it up’ by the executive branch.

I’ll summarize by the example of one of the film’s early scenes. Jonah comes in to town with some freshly killed bounties to redeem his reward. One thing leads to another and he ends up in a firefight. No surprises there. He fires off quickly with a pair of Gatling guns from 2 meters away from his target. He misses them all. What? Later, once everyone is dead he leaves the town and it explodes in a glorious fireball. This chain of events is exemplary for about every other scene of the movie.

I’m usually good at figuring out who will like almost anything. Even if it’s not great, it’s made such that someone will like it. It may not be for me but it’s for someone, right? This time I’m at a loss. I can’t figure out who will like, or even not hate this movie.