Jonah Hex

A shoot-’em-up that’s generally a letdown

Watching the film adaptation of DC Comics’ Jonah Hex is like watching an 80-minute trailer. There are a lot of explosions and shoot-outs, plenty of scenes of Megan Fox shedding petticoats, a few solid one-liners, some inexplicable dreamlike sequences and jarring bursts of squealing rock music. There’s also just enough of a plot—an overly ambitious cocktail of revenge, friendship, mortality and morality, mixed in with allusions to modern-day terrorism and the Tea Party—to tie together the action, however loosely.

Josh Brolin is spot-on as the sneering Jonah, a bounty hunter with an unsavory past and unusual ability to wake the dead. John Malkovich is equally convincing as his archnemesis, Quentin Turnbull, who once destroyed Jonah’s face and family and has put the United States, on the brink of its centennial, next on his to-annihilate list. And Fox—well, she gives the role of sharp-shooting prostitute Lilah her best twangy effort, but the performance of her corset is more impressive than her own. Even if she could keep up with the Brolin and Malkovich, the film would still leave plenty to be desired, as too much is touched on without being developed. Like so many of the film’s sets, the whole thing goes up in smoke.