Video Corner 3: Jonah Hex

I was so excited about this, then I saw a few reviews… I wasn’t going to be disheartened though – Josh Brolin as the bad-ass Jonah Hex and John Malkovich as Quentin Turnbull. How can this be bad? Oh Megan Fox is in it… If you’re not a straight teenage boy, chances are that won’t appeal to you. Luckily for everyone other than those little chaps, she’s only in it for about 15 minutes. Which is quite a large chunk of the film considering it’s only 75 minutes (once you take out the 8 minute long end credits…). Obviously we have to remember this is based on a comic book series, so don’t expect a hugely realistic plot – we get a nice traditional comic book movie story – mad man, dead family, angry hero seeks vengeance, giant weapon, destroy the world, save the world, etc etc.

The film itself is rather stylish and is quite well directed by Jimmy Hayward, with pretty decent special effects. Casting is excellent – Brolin is fantastic as Hex and has some brilliant one liners. Fox is there purely for her boobaayz and I suppose she does that well despite being her irritating self. Malkovich brings his trademark awesomeness. But the real problem with this is that it’s just far too short – it never seems to build up momentum and if enjoying the film and you catch a look at the run time, you stop enjoying it as much when you release you’ve only got 40 minutes or so left when you’re half an hour into it. Saying that I’ve not read the original comics, so fans reading this please ignore my ignorance.

What would really be good is a director’s cut, as I have a feeling 50% of this film ended up on a cutting room floor. If I’m wrong then I’d be extremely disappointed that Warner Brothers would put out such a short picture.

“Get your tits out! We can still save this movie!”