Short Take: Entertaining but sorely underdeveloped - It could have been considerably better

Director: Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who!)

Screenwriter: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Gamer, Crank: High Voltage)

Cast: Josh Brolin (Milk, No Country for Old Men), Megan Fox (Jennifer’s Body, Transformers), John Malkovich (Burn After Reading, Changeling), Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds, Fish Tank, 300)

Length: 1 hour 23 minutes

Synopsis: The film begins with former Confederate soldier Jonah Hex (Brolin) forced to watch his wife and son burn to death at the hands of former friend Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich).  Left for dead, Hex is found and revived by a group of Crow Indians, but he’s a changed man.  Not only does he literally bear a brand of Turnbull’s betrayal on his face, but his travels between death and life left him with some unique abilities.  Hex can seemingly survive any number of bullet wounds and revive the dead for short periods of time with a single touch.  Hex devotes his life to taking revenge on Turnbull and when the U.S. government asks for his help in stopping Turnbull from using a powerful weapon against innocent citizens during the nation’s centennial celebration, he must find him before time runs out.

Analysis:

Jonah Hex is a genre film caught between two desires.  The first is devotion to its schlock origins: a DC Comics series from the ‘70s, which was itself a rip-off of Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns of the previous decade.  The second is a drive to question concepts of good and evil and life and death.  It only fully succeeds with the former.

Jonah Hex’s pulpiest and most genre-coded elements come in the form of its basic character types.  Hex is a clear homage to Leone’s many bounty hunter characters, especially Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name from the Dollars trilogy.  He will kill anyone as long as he gets his money, he’s the fastest shot around and he always wears the same stylized Confederate uniform and cloak.  His scarred face and dark clothes are meant to mark him as tough and dangerous, but since he’s the hero, he’s also supposed to have a softer, more moral side.  The death of Hex’s family and his commitment to avenging them humanizes the character slightly, but the film uses the event more as a justification for Hex’s darkness.  An earlier cut of the film was supposed to have contained extended sequences in which the ghost of Hex’s wife guides him toward Turnbull, but those scenes have seemingly been cut, which is a shame since they might have added some genuine interest and layering to the character.

Rather, Megan Fox’s prostitute character Lilah is mostly responsible for softening Hex’s edges.  Hookers with hearts are often used in Western films to add a level of humanity to the lead cowboys and Lilah is no different.  However, rather than act as pure damsel in distress or as the good woman who does little more than wait for Hex’s return, the character is updated to fit contemporary female action hero ideals.  Basically, she can somewhat defend herself and even fire a gun pretty well.

Rounding out the typical cast of B-movie action Western characters are the ruthless villain, Turnbull, and his twisted sidekick, Burke.  For the most part, both characters exist purely because Western and Action genre conventions dictate so.  However, just as with Hex and Lilah, Turnbull and Burke are given some level of variation in an attempt to make the characters more interesting.  Burke is little more than a sadistic villain, but the relish and aggression with which Fassbender plays him makes the character compelling.  One of the film’s most engaging scenes occurs when Burke comes after Lilah.  The way Fox and Fassbender circle each other like wild animals trapped in the same cage hints that Jonah Hex might have been a more satisfying film if it were more devoted to character development than explosions.  Turnbull’s complexity comes through his identification as a terrorist; his acts of terrorism seemingly driven by a lingering Confederate hatred of the Union.  For example, he tests his weapons on innocent citizens at one point, but his reasons or goal in doing so aren’t fully explained and his actions seem to spring only from his predilection for violence.  While there is potential to seriously explore concepts of terrorism and evil through the character, the subplot seems to exist only to heighten the stakes of Hex’s desire for revenge.

Misusing the terrorism concept is just one way of many in which screenwriters Neveldine and Taylor squander the story’s potential for deeper meaning.  Hex’s character arc is the most obvious failing.  Though there is one reference to how bounty hunting begins to destroy his soul, the subject is never explored.  Similarly, Hex’s strange connection with the afterlife, especially his ability to revive the dead, offers a number of ways to make the film’s exploration of life and death more meaningful, but the concept is only used in ways that further the plot rather than as a way to flesh out the character.

Throughout Jonah Hex, emotional weight is sacrificed for the demands of summer action films so what the audience gets is a film where nearly every exciting development ends with explosions or gunshots.  Perhaps if the film had spent more time developing its characters, the final scene suggesting the possibility of a sequel wouldn’t seem like a laughable impossibility.

Rating: 4.5