First of all, let me say that this is not a review. Reviews don’t include words like "I" or "me" because a critic is trying to convey the idea that he is not a person, that what he is saying is truth and not opinion. Old journalism trick. No, this is strictly opinion. This is a smear job, even though the movie JONAH HEX probably doesn’t need it. It didn’t even break even, so it’s almost certain there won’t be a second one.
No, this is personal. Because I love Jonah Hex, and DC betrayed my love by allowing Warner Brothers to make a shitty movie out of a wonderful comic book series. This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. It still hurts whenever I think about what CONSTANTINE did to my beloved HELLBLAZER. So I feel the need to excoriate the movie JONAH HEX. This is vengeance, pure and simple.
First of all, let’s talk about Hex’s background (because this is where the movie drops the ball big time). They make no mention of how Hex’s father sold him into white slavery as a child to the Apache. It’s a long story, so I won’t go into it here, but what it comes down to is this: according to the movie, Quentin Turnbull, played by John Malkovich, is the one who gives Hex the Mark of the Demon. Anyone who has ever enjoyed the JONAH HEX series from DC knows this is absolute heresy. Because of a misunderstanding, Hex gets a heated tomahawk to the face by THE APACHE WHO RAISED HIM TO ADULTHOOD.
And let’s talk about the Mark of the Demon a bit, because the movie people fucked up the make up. You see, they forgot about the eye. The scar starts at the mouth, then moves up and widens Hex’s eye, which is clearly blind throughout the comic book series. Did Josh Brolin, the actor who played Hex in the movie, have an aversion to eye make up? Maybe wearing a cataract contact lens bothered him.
Anyway, in the movie it is Turnbull who uses a branding iron to fuck up Hex’s face. As he’s doing this, his men murder Hex’s family. Wait, family? Hex didn’t have a family in his background. Sure, later on in the original comic book series, Hex married a woman and had a child with her, but this is not background stuff. This is part of the story. Not only that, but his wife and kid eventually leave him . . . but according to the DC canon, they are both still alive and well.
To make matters worse, the movie folks depict a scene in which, after Hex has been burned by Turnbull’s branding iron, he uses a heated tomahawk to cauterize the wound. Why? Didn’t a BRANDING IRON do the job already? So in the end, it looks like Hex himself gave himself the scar on his face. BULLSHIT! Have the screenwriters even read the original series? Or did they just see a picture of Jonah Hex?
All right, let’s move on to the animated opening credits. Why is it that every movie made out of a comic book series has to have some form of animated credits? Is it just Hollywood’s way of reminding you that hey, this is just comic book stuff? Nothing too important. This kind of garbage just takes a viewer out of the movie and takes credibility away from the storytellers. Believe me, there isn’t enough credibility to waste here.
There is one background thing the screenwriters get right: Hex did kill Turnbull’s son. However, well, it’s a long story. Suffice it to say, Hex didn’t kill him because the guy was a superior officer during the Civil War who had ordered him to burn down a hospital. The truth is a lot weirder than that.
And now, we come to the biggest transgression against the comic book series EVER. According to the movie, Hex was so close to death because of his encounter with Turnbull that he suddenly has the ability to talk with the dead. WHAT?! Where did they get that stupid fucking idea?
All right. This movie is clearly a horror movie. In fact, it’s technically a Weird Western Tale. To those who don’t know, Weird Western Tales are a subgenre of both horror and westerns that combines the two. It was actually named because of the long-running DC series called WEIRD WESTERN TALES, which originally was called ALL STAR WESTERN, in which Jonah Hex made his first appearance.
While some of the other characters in WWT were supernatural (El Diablo comes immediately to mind), HEX NEVER HAD ANY HORROR ELEMENTS TO HIS STORIES. Sure, a lot of strange things happened, but there was nothing that couldn’t actually happen in real life.
Some of you might bring up the Vertigo Hex stories penned by Joe R. Lansdale. Let me make this perfectly clear: I love Lansdale’s work, and his Hex stuff is top notch. However, it is clearly not a part of the actual canon. Nor is the ill-conceived series, HEX, which took place after the original JONAH HEX series ended, catapulting Hex into the distant future. Bottom line: Hex is not magic. The end.
I will give Brolin this much: he does the best he can with the crap he’s given. However, it’s very clear that he’s no fan of the original Hex series. No paycheck is worth this horrible rape of a movie.
Something the movie folks get right: the booze. Hex drinks a lot, and a lot of it ends up slipping out through the hole in his mouth. It’s a nice touch, but it’s certainly not redemptive.
For example, why is the BOUNTY HUNTER Jonah Hex wanted by the authorities? No reason is ever given for this. Sure, in the comic books the occasional story required that he be wanted dead or alive, but this is not good enough for the movie. And they’re willing to give a mere $500 for him? That’s pretty low even for wild west standards, considering how dangerous Hex can be.
Well, they do make a half-hearted attempt at explaining this, but it makes no sense. Apparently, Hex turned Turnbull in during the Civil War (which just did not happen in the books; again, the truth is much weirder and you should read it for yourself). This is just another rape of the series.
Enough about Hex. Let’s talk about some of the other characters for a moment. Aidan Quinn plays President Grant as part of a storyline that was actually covered in the original series, although in a different way. In the books, Turnbull was going to assassinate Grant, but in the movie, Turnbull just wants to attack Washington, DC, with a giant cannon and a bunch of radioactive cannon balls. However, Quinn simply isn’t drunk enough to play Grant, who in real life was an exceptional boozehound.
Will Arnett. I love his work, especially his ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT stuff (and if you haven't seen LET'S GO TO PRISON, you should). However, he’s just such a funny guy that his serious work cannot be taken seriously. Really, why did he think that he could play a military man with any credibility? He tried, but the task is impossible.
Megan Fox. A lot of people like to give her shit (rightfully so; ever see JENNIFER’S BODY?), but she is kind of nice to look at. However, the character she plays is based on someone from the books who is HORRIBLY SCARRED. Dangerous? You bet, but she is anything but pretty. In the books, she's a bounty hunter, not a fucking whore like in the movie. You’re probably getting tired of the word “rape” in this so-called review, but seriously. Tallulah (Lilah here) is a total betrayal of what the character is about in the books. And as a side note, could her relationship with Hex be any more clichéd? The hooker with the heart of gold and the man who wants to take her away from it all, but he’s too afraid because people around him tend to die? Ugh.
Then there’s Turnbull himself. Malkovich plays him as a psycho, which he certainly wasn’t in the books. He was a southern gentleman, and he never got his own hands dirty. He was the kind of person to hire out his villainy. In the movie, he constantly kills people who get in his way. It’s over the top, like everything else in the movie.
Did I mention that Hex’s horse comes with mounted mini-Gatling guns? First of all, the sheer idea is ridiculous, and secondly, when did Hex ever need anything more than his Dragoons?
Jesus Christ, this is getting long, but I still have plenty of bile left over.
The thing that baffles me is the snake man in the brawl in the middle of the movie. Why is he around? Didn’t the filmmakers “horror” the movie up enough? They just had to throw this acid-drooling asshole in?
And the giant cannon Turnbull uses was created by Eli Whitney? The Cotton Gin guy?
And explosive crossbows? Holy shit, can you get any more stupid than this?
All right, so the mystical Indians save Hex after he’s close to death, at which point Hex pukes out a crow. Fucking typical bullshit.
But the thing that really gets to me is when Hex is hallucinating as he’s near death. He thinks he comes upon Turnbull and winds up having a fight to the death with him. Why does this scene exist? Is it because the movie is on the short side, and they needed something to pad it out?
Or maybe they just wanted something to refer to later in the symbolic final battle between Hex and Turnbull? That’s right, as they physically duke it out, Hex has constant flashbacks to his earlier hallucination, so that it all matches up with what is actually happening in the present. Why would the filmmakers do this? There’s no point, it’s not cool, it merely annoys the shit out of me. I doubt that I’m the only Hex fan out there who was insulted by this awful movie.
All right, another thing I liked about the movie: people constantly asking Hex what happened to his face. This is purely from the Lansdale Hex books. However, the snarky answers he gives are never as good as the ones Lansdale gave us.
Fine. I’m done raving. What it comes down to is this: the JONAH HEX movie is an absolute rape of everything I find enjoyable about the JONAH HEX comic book series. We must stop a sequel from ever being made, just in case DC and Warner didn’t get the message. If you really want to see a good Hex story told in movie format, pick up UNDER THE RED HOOD. There’s a special feature which retells a Hex story from the current series at DC, and it’s written by Lansdale hisownself. THAT is what Hex is really about.
I’m drunk and angry, so I’ll stop now. There isn’t enough whiskey in the world to forgive what Hollywood did to Hex. Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that this is not a movie worth watching. If I’ve made you curious at all, I apologize. As I said earlier, this is a smear job. If I am the last person in the world to ever watch this movie, I’ll be happy.
That is all.
JONAH HEX
Written by Neveldine and Taylor (Holy shit! It all makes sense now! These jackholes were responsible for the CRANK franchise. No wonder this movie sucks so much.)
Directed by Jimmy Hayward
82 minutes (which is far too long, if you ask me)
$17.99 at Amazon (which is far too much, if you ask me)
2010
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