Keven Takes on: JONAH HEX

I wanted to give poor Jonah Hex a shot so I disregarded as much of the negative press and reviews as possible. Since this badboy is hitting DVD/Blu-Ray Oct.12, I thought I'd check it out and pull the band-aid off really fast to get it over with. I wasn't familiar with the comic and after watching the movie, I feel sorry for the comic because both the movie and the comic can jump off a cliff and fall into the 'suck abyss.'

That was probably too harsh. Jonah Hex isn't 100% bad, it's about 90% bad - maybe more depending on my mood if I consider the 1.5 hours I spent watching it to be a waste of my time. The film is an adaptation of a DC comic that nobody read growing up. He's sort of like DC's version of Marvel's Ghost Rider - minus anything cool. Is it odd that the kid with the bag obsession from American Beauty is in both films too? This is all that freak's fault - him and his sideburns.

Getting to the point though - Hex is about our title cowboy on a quest for revenge to put down the nasty folks that burned his family alive and gave him a really cool face melting. When Hex almost dies from said face melting, the natives revive him and bless him with the ability to touch dead people and make them come alive for a few seconds so he can move the shoddy plot forward. This makes one worthwhile scene throughout the awfully paced Hex kind of cool. The Comedian shows up and arm wrestles Hex in a graveyard. Cool! That's a DC crossover - take that Avengers!

The villains are what saved a little of the movie for me. John Malkovich who seems to be taking any role these days to pay for his new hipster sailboat, is our lead baddie. I don't know how he does it, but he actually comes across as believable in his role. Michael Fassbender is his Irish henchman who does his best Clockwork Orange impersonation to which I thought was by far the worthiest performance in the film. Not that it was hard to pull off - but Fassbender owns the movie regardless and I'm pretty sure he didn't try too hard. Josh Brolin plays Josh Brolin playing that guy from No Country for Old Men playing Jonah Hex. I don't know if it was his fault, but the character is so deadpan I didn't give a crap about his plight for revenge nor did I distress at any point in the film when he was in danger. I was actually hoping someone would kill him so we didn't have to see Wild West Frankenstein shuffle towards the camera anymore.

Then Megan Fox shows up and does nothing. I think if there was an award for most useless supporting performance, Fox would win it for her role as brothel skank in Jonah Hex. Is it sad that one of the best action sequences in the film was her shooting a couple guys on a boat? Not a good sign. When the credits rolled I also about crapped myself when I saw two of my favorite directors getting a screenplay credit for the movie. Neveldine/Taylor - please don't do this again.

Aside from Fassbender having some cool neck tats and getting to slap brothel skank in the face, there's not much to like in this movie. The effects were ok - and at one point the soundtrack didn't have guitars, so that was kind of cool too. I don't know why heavy metal band Mastodon did the score, but I'm attributing that to the fact that they like to get high a lot. Which is probably one of the only ways you should see this movie. Yes it's that good.