Jonah Hex
“Revenge Gets Ugly”. Ya, the movie ain’t that great either. Based on the DC comic book, created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga, JONAH HEX (played by Josh Brolin) is a horribly scarred confederate solider turned bounty hunter. Bent on revenge for death of his family by the villain, Quinten Turnbull, played by John Malkovich, Jonah hunts him down and saves the country in the process.
A big issue that most will have when they see this movie is the lack of plot. Essentially this is a story of revenge with barely a touch of origin story. In addition to the lack of depth in the plot, there are plot holes that scar the movie as much as Jonah’s face is. For example, Turnbull orders his second-in-command to hunt down something Jonah cares about. Immediately following, you see the guy head straight to what can only be assumed is Jonah’s girlfriend, Lilah. Lilah, who’s also prostitute, played by Megan Fox, is captured and used as, basically, a plot device. Adian Quinn also makes a bearded appearance as President Grant, but to be honest, if it wasn’t blatantly stated in the dialog, I would’ve never been able to tell who he was supposed to be.
Right now, fans of the comic book hero are probably getting pissed. The reason for this is due to the fact that, while it may be based on the DC comic book series, it barely resembles anything having to with it. Some characters do come from the comic book, but the origin of his facial scarring, the death of his family, his beautiful girlfriend/prostitute, all have the fingerprints of Hollywood on them to make the film more “accessible”.
The director responsible for this train wreck (also in the film) is Jimmy Hayward. A Pixar animator turn director. This technically is his first non-animated feature and only his second turn at directing. One thing that seemed odd was that every time there was a shot of Megan Fox, it always seemed to be in a soft focus for no particular reason. She’s very attractive, it’s not like she or the scene(s) needed it. The two writers responsible are Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, credited as (I kid you not) “Neveldine & Taylor”. From the looks at their respective resumes, its no wonder this film ended up as it did.
Overall, I would recommend avoiding this film.
I take umbrage with your notes about the writers. First, they’re credited as “Neveldine/Taylor.” :) Second, this wasn’t their fault. They wrote an R-rated, gritty movie. The studio ordered outside rewrites and changed the plot entirely. So they didn’t really write the final product. Also, they wrote the Crank movies and Gamer, which were all fun–hardly comparable to this movie.
Neveldine/Taylor or Neveldine & Taylor. Either way it’s not like they’re Woodward and Bernstein or Martin and Lewis. Using a / just makes them seem more pompous. The grit was cliche to say the least. And finally, I saw Gamer and it was pretty lame. Character development wasn’t very deep in Gamer. The had a possibly decent movie idea but plot and dialogue was weak.