Jonah Hex

2010 comic book Western

Rating: 9/20

Plot: In postbellum America, Jonah Hex is Civil War hero turned ruthless bounty hunter. The government enlists him to help find John Malkovich and his posse, Wild West terrorist who hope to bring America to its knees by using the same weapon technology that Jar Jar Binks and his friends used in The Phantom Menace--glowing orbs. Hex is all over that because Malkovich is the guy who scarred his face and killed his family.

A lot of this movie is incoherent. The plot's easy enough to follow, and the characters are nothing but cardboard types, but the individual parts that made up this whole just didn't make a lot of sense. It has the kind of fight scenes where you lose focus and can't keep track of what's going on. It's almost like that feeling when somebody turns off the lights and you can't figure out what's happening until your eyes adjust. Watching the action sequences in this movie was just like that feeling. The ultra-modern look of the movie almost clashed with the post-Civil-War and dusty town settings, and the score, thick in rockin' electronic git-fiddles, really annoyed me. There were some moments here (I like the first gun fight scene that winked at predecessors) and Josh Brolin was pretty good as the anti-hero type although his character does seem like a composite of a handful of silver screen anti-heroes. And despite all the whining about Megan Fox lately, I liked it when she was on the screen. But I suspect Jonah Hex is a movie that should have stayed a comic book, a film that cries out, "Look at how fresh I am! I'm new!" while actually seeming like nothing more than a Sin City rip-off.

What do you think, Kairow? Comic/movie comparison?