Review: 'Jonah Hex'

You know a movie really sucks when its only an hour and 20 minutes long...but feels like three. This is exactly what I experienced when I made the unfortunate decision to make use of some free sneak preview passes to go see Jonah Hex. The movie had a good trailer, Josh Brolin, and overall just seemed like a fun time. How wrong I was.

After watching his family being murdered before his eyes, and having the right side of his face mutilated with a branding iron, Jonah Hex becomes a ruthless and cynical bounty hunter. Then the U.S. military comes to him with an offer he can't refuse: they'll let him go a free man, exonerated of all the warrents for him, in exchange for him stopping the evil terrorist Quentin Turnbull...the man who took everything from him all those years ago. Its your run-of-the-mill revenge story, we don't get anything new here...that is, unless you count the absurd and incredibly out-of-place supernatural element that comes into the story out of nowhere, where hey! Jonah Hex can magically bring dead people back to life temporarily by touching them! ::rolls eyes::

We get the slow motion double gun draws to loud music, quippy one-liners (none of them actually clever, of course) and explosions galore. What we don't get is any characters worth caring about. Megan Fox had one purpose, and one purpose alone: to stand there in a tight corset with her chest hanging out while speaking with an accent. And even watching her do that is painful. Josh Brolin's talent is completely wasted as well. His job: to run around with an ugly scar on his face while speaking in the same gruff voice with the same sour expression on his face the entire movie. All of this might have even been tolerable if the movie ever found its rhythm and pace, which unfortunately, it never did. It didn't flow, and after a while, I stopped waiting to get into the story and started waiting impatiently to get out of the theater.

Rating: D