Jonah Hex

This fantastic/terror/science-fiction/Western deals with a disfigured gunslinger named Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) , a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head , he is wanted dead or alive , reward 50.000 dollars . President Grant (Aidan Quinn) is informed of the train massacre by Lieutenant Grass (Will Arnett) and surmises that Turnbull plans to attack the Union on the Fourth of July (the country centennial). Grass is told to find Jonah and hire him to stop Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) . The U.S.A. President and his assistant make an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist who is ready to unleash Hell on Earth by means of an atomic bomb . After that , Jonah goes to a brothel and spends the night with Lilah (Megan Fox), a bitch attracted to the scarred gunfighter for more than just professional interest . Later on , Jonah heads to Fort Resurrection and Independence Harbor , Virginia , looking for the ominous criminal Quentin .

This moving picture blends action , western, shootouts, fantastic elements with hallucinogenics shots , besides a little bit violence. The final confrontation amongst the starring and contenders on the ship is overblown with amazing and stirring images . The storyline from Brian Tyler and Navaldine based on original comic books characters appearing in magazines published by DC Comics and created by John Albano & Tony DeZuniga , though the drawings are much better, thus the film is some boring and isn't well paced . The story bears certain resemblance to ¨Blueberry¨(2004) by Jean Kounen in similar style, theme , scenarios and hallucinatory special effects created by Ariel Velasco Shaw . The motion picture obtained limited success, as United States as Europe failed at box office . Exciting musical score fitting to action by Marco Beltrani . Colorful though dark cinematography by Amundsen , mostly filmed in New Orleans , Louisiana. Jimmy Hayward direction is mediocre , without originality and nothing new to show , being a simple copy based on the comic books. Hayward is an expert on Animation Department in charge of ¨Toys 2¨, ¨Bugs¨, ¨Monsters S.A.¨ , ¨Finding Nemo¨ and directed ¨Horton¨ and ¨Jonah Hex¨ this is his first film in real frames . Rating : acceptable and passable . The flick will appeal to peculiar and rare western buffs

First, I want to mention some of the good stuff. Josh Brolin is excellent as Hex, perfect casting, great job by Brolin, thoroughly enjoyable to watch. John Malkovich was very good in a role that could have easily been too over the top to be taken seriously. Fassbender was genuinely creepy, Jeffrey Dean Morgan was great, and Megan Fox looks gorgeous and her acting is not that bad. Combine that with an amazing soundtrack by Mastodon, (and a surprise cameo by Brent Hinds) I have to say I enjoyed the movie. The negatives: "The Weapon" - a weird, quasi-science, completely unexplained "nation-killer" invented by Eli Whitney... WTF? Stupid. While on the subject, why does the world have to be at stake? A simple revenge tale would have sufficed. Aidan Quinn was awful, but it probably wasn't his fault, unless he wrote his own lines. Why tell Hex's backstory with a couple of minutes of poorly animated crap with a voice-over when they could've filmed Hex's origin sequence and made it a much better movie? No idea, but I can't explain many of the choices that were made on this movie. Why was it only 80 minutes long? Who thought that was a good idea? Who cast Will Arnett in a straight role? I kept waiting for him to do something funny. To sum it up, there was some really good work done on this movie, but there were too many terrible decisions made that left it a disjointed mess in spite of its potential. As a life-long Jonah Hex fan, I was happy to see him captured so perfectly by Brolin, but disappointed as hell that the studio screwed up the movie so badly, and ruined any chance of this becoming a successful franchise.

I'm hesitant to call this an out and out terrible movie as some have labelled it simply because it was mildly entertaining. There's a lot of action, some cool ideas, a great performance by Josh Brolin and the short 80 minute running time doesn't hurt it either.

The sad truth of the whole thing is that it just didn't come close to its potential. For starters, Jonah Hex didn't have to be macabre and supernatural...to my knowledge this wasn't even part of the original comic books that the movie is based on. The original story is simple, Jonah Hex's family is murdered, he's horribly scarred and left for dead. He gets better and sets out for revenge. It's a pretty classic western tale...one that we've seen before but given the general lack of western movies these days, that doesn't matter...there's plenty of room in theatres for a fun out for revenge Western. Having said all that, the supernatural ideas that they came up with are actually kinda cool, and I would've been happy to see them mixed in, if only they'd been handled better. Instead these elements seem tossed in as an excuse to include CG effects that the box office loves oh so much.

The end result is an unfortunate mash up of a good ideas...that maybe could've worked if more time had been put into development, it feels like it was either slapped together too hastily or suffered from a massive reedit...during most of the film I couldn't shake the feeling that there was maybe a 2 hour+ director's cut lying on the floor somewhere which may or may not be a superior and more coherent film. I was looking forward Jonah Hex based on a short appearance he had in a Batman cartoon years ago...from that alone I thought the character had a lot of movie potential but I was let down. Brolin's performance is the best part of the movie. Malkovich is good but nothing too spectacular considering his track record, and even Megan Fox is half decent but she doesn't have a lot to do with her pretty much useless character.

Analysis Paralysis!

It was fun. Everyone did a competent job. It's not a movie for intellectuals, just for people who enjoy flicks. As more people see it, its rating will go up. It's now 4.3/10 with 1,266 votes. Watch.

I really enjoyed that the special F/X were not overdone.

It's a comic book fer cryin' out loud!, it's not supposed to be No Country for Old Men!

I was never bored, it was well paced.

That whole business with the dead people was fun and nice plot enhancer.

I really don't know what all the negative fuss it about.

It's not a summer blockbuster, it's a summer popcorn and soda, better-than-T.V. techno western flick.

Actually, my expectations were so diminished by all the bad press that I enjoyed it More that I expected I would.

As I read all the detailed bad press and saw what over analysis was in the comments, and discounted all that, that's what put me over the edge to go and see it.

And I'm glad I did.

It was fun.

No one's careers were ruined. Just briskly moving summer fun.

I'm a fan of comics and westerns so even though I knew of Jonah Hex in name only this was something I knew I could probably at least sit through. I've seen some reviews and they seem a little harsh. It wasn't anything special but it moved a long fairly quickly and I wasn't bored for what that's worth.

I agree with others that Brolin was a good choice for Hex. I was glad to see Malkovich there but he seemed a tad underwhelming. I think he's a great actor so I trust he nailed the character though. Will Arnett stuck out like a sore thumb in the small number of scenes he was in. He's a goofy, funny guy I just don't really want to see him in a serious role. You almost can't tell if he's for real or being sarcastically serious. Megan Fox is Megan Fox. Why people are complaining so much about her acting I have no idea. She's there for sex appeal. No one thinks she's the next coming of Meryl Streep or something.

The movie looked a little too synthetic for me especially some of the "ultimate weapon" stuff. It looked a little too clean for a western too. I don't know why some movies like There Will Be Blood can look so authentic and suck you in to the setting but others like this just look too fake.

I figured there would be some fantastic elements involved even though it was grounded in real life, just because of the comic influence. That might have prepared me a little more for the stuff others might have found to be out of place. In fairness movies are a little bit like watching a sporting event for the first time. If you don't know the rules or know what to expect you're likely to not enjoy it much. After the first 5 minutes or so I figured as much to not be jarred by some of the more out of place plot elements, so all in all I thought it was a short, somewhat entertaining movie. Glad it wasn't much longer though.