At our critics’ screening for Jimmy Hayward and Warner Bros.’ new comic book actioner “Jonah Hex,” many in the audience were doubled over in gales of derisive laughter. This did not seem right for many reasons, but chiefly that there’s only cruelty found in such behavior. No, the right reaction is perhaps a massaging of one’s temples or perhaps eyes buried in one’s hands, for “Jonah Hex” is a series of terrible creative decisions stuck together with masking tape and low ambitions.
Running at barely 80 minutes, “Jonah Hex” feels like a shortened version of, shockingly, a much duller, more turgid film. It’s almost it’s own montage. “Hex” is so perfunctory, so stilted, so poorly written, directed and at times, acted, that it barely qualifies as a movie. It makes sense for critics to guffaw at, say, the “Resident Evil” movies, but there’s something sad, even borderline handicapped about this entire endeavor. As if the hypothetical 100-105-minute-long mess wasn’t dull enough, no movie deserves the type of treatment it appears “Hex” has received, chopped down by an editor hoping to create something resembling a commercial. Its incoherence, its clear contempt for physics, logic, human behavior, story structure, or even naked spectacle are partly the result of someone (Hayward, possibly rumored ghost-director Francis Lawrence) who shouldn’t be allowed to direct traffic on a one-way street, crippled even further by the maddeningly dada edits provided by a few studio butchers people should hide the silverware from.
The list of working and/or talented actors awash in this mess is disheartening. The grizzled Josh Brolin is as good a pick as any to play the DC Comics gunslinger, and here, he’s all dark humor and grimace. Hex is a Civil War soldier who we learn through arbitrarily-placed flashbacks interfered with the evil intentions of battalion leader Quentin Turnbull, resulting in the death of his family, a favor returned by the murder of Hex. While Hex mysteriously survives the violent revenge, he also develops an uncanny ability to speak to the deceased, a skill that befits his new gig as a bounty hunter above the law. As if it was the most original concept ever seen in a comic book movie adaptation, portions of this story are told through a hastily-animated segment that showcases Hex’s other-worldliness we’re already learning about from the narration.
However, Turnbull, sort of a latter day Tea Party activist, has concocted a plan to overthrow the still-young American democracy, stealing an old-fashioned WMD developed by the fledgling government, causing President Grant (Aidan Quinn, in the wrong movie) to seek out Turnbull’s main opposition, Hex. See, the President remembers how Hex defied Turnbull’s orders, and as a result had his family murdered while he was left for dead. Clearly, he’s enough of an upgrade that Grant speaks the immortal words, “The fate of the world rests on his shoulders.”
And it’s that feeble set-up that gets the movie going, and by that we mean, it creaks into the second act, which you will not realize until you’re five minutes from the closing credits. Hayward, an animation vet formerly of Pixar who directed “Horton Hears A Who” seems like an inspired choice for a medium-budget actioner with plenty of space for visual improvisation. However, “Hex” is both in a hurry and wasteful, filled with unenlightening dream sequences and flashbacks, sometimes folded within each other and handled without a shred of inventiveness or wit. To tell you the exact progression of scenes – Hex scouts Turnbull’s headquarters, Hex is defeated soundly, Hex heals and/or is risen from the dead, Hex gallops back into action, rosy sunsets – obscures the fact that it’s jammed together like a demo reel sandwich with zero connective tissue.
The script is by “Crank” masterminds Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, and you’d expect some naughty transgressiveness or bad taste interludes to curb the monotony, but whatever cuts were made clearly rid the film of any moments of color. What’s surprising is that in addition to an eye-damaging color scheme where visually all tan becomes red and all black becomes dead space, “Hex” is a mundane, often boring offering. You can see where there’s opportunity for a digression from standard action film staples, but a sequence where Hex is nursed back to health by a group of random, dialogue-less magic healing Native Americans (progress!) is shot and edited so quickly it’s never apparent exactly how long Hex is down for the count, or what happened to him, or how he was healed, or if his hallucinations are fueled by the medicine, who these Native Americans are, or why they’re saving his life, or…
Of course, if you ask any of these questions, “Hex”‘s action starts jumping up and down, waving its hands and screaming, “Quick, look over here! Stuff!” We can speculate the one fragment of what’s left of the Neveldine/Taylor draft is a short pitstop to an underground fighting tournament where a supernatural “snake-man” is making short work of his opponents. Snake-Man never returns, and the scene itself, serving no narrative purpose, is over and done with in about four screen minutes. Oh, and the random screaming man walking in and out of the shot during arbitrary camera cuts? Someone told us that’s Michael Shannon, who retains “senior billing” (“…and Michael Shannon!”) despite essentially being cut from the film. Lucky him.
Brolin remains a compelling screen presence at times, and we still stand by that particular bit of casting. It’s that darn makeup job that’s crippled the normally inexpressive, stoic actor, limiting whatever expressiveness he still had and obscuring his speech to an absurd degree. As a prosthetic, it doesn’t look detailed or graphic enough, meaning half of the movie is spent forgetting you’re watching this film and wondering why the kid from “The Goonies” stapled a pancake to his cheek. In shadows, Brolin’s exaggerated grunt and scowl resembles Warren Oates at his most vulnerable. Once he steps into the light, the PG-13 scar looks like his Bubble Yum got away from him.
For those of you who say things like, “I would watch John Malkovich reading from the phone book!” you’ll find “Hex” to be a treat, as Malkovich, clearly holding the material in contempt, pitches his performance in the range of “Jepsen, Anderson” and “Nugart, Nenah.” Megan Fox, bless her, does as much as someone can with what little material she has as the standard “tough chick who can take care of herself… until she can’t!” damsel-in-distress. Michael Fassbender, as a maniacal Irish henchman, seems to think “Hex” is a dry run for another of executive producer Akiva Goldsman’s “Batman” movies. Meanwhile, it’s nice to see faces like Wes Bentley (bloated, coked-out), Will Arnett (distracted, irrelevant) and Lance Reddick (who fills an embarrassing, wide-eyed “Lawd have merceh!” moment with as much dignity as he can muster).
Not one moment goes by in “Jonah Hex” where a single line, shot, visual conceit or story device doesn’t misfire. Some will have a bit of curiosity about how a film can be so terrible, but do not indulge or humor that curiosity, as the only worth “Hex” has is a test reel to wannabe directors about what not to do. The film doesn’t even carry value as an example of one of the most intriguing and rewarding genres, the western, and we struggle to consider worse examples of the genre. Shamefully, the film’s startlingly unfinished coda, featuring our hero sailing off into a “Lawnmower Man” quality CGI background, seems to paint Hex as a superpowered do-gooder who will be the star of many other adventures in the near future. Considering all the supernatural business going on, it’s the only menacing moment of “Jonah Hex.” [F]