Jonah Hex Movie Review

I know there is some speculation going around about Jonah Hex right now, so I thought I would put most of it to a rest. I had the opportunity to catch the Jonah Hex screener in Los Angeles last Sunday and I have to say I was disappointed. The basic plot line of the movie wasn't too bad it was the execution of it.

The movie starts off with Jonah Hex on his horse dragging 3 dead bodies behind him. He rides into town and delivers these bodies to the local sheriff as a bounty and demands the reward. He gets double crossed and then a fire fight breaks out. This was the most exciting part of the entire movie. Jonah Hex lifts the covers off his horse and revels the Gatling guns (I know) but its actually cooler than it seems. He blasts the sheriff and his deputies and then finishes off the rest of the town with his six shooter. Now the rest of the movie goes down hill from here. We are a given a little back story of Jonah Hex about how he was a rouge confederate soldier who was given supernatural abilities by an Indian tribe after he was forced to watch his family burn. The man who killed his family General Turnbull (John Malkovich) has been in hiding and is planning to steal the blueprints from the government to build a super weapon. The President of the united states orders that Jonah Hex is to be found and forced into the military to stop his long time enemy General Turnbull. Jonah Hex agrees to help the government and goes on a journey to find him.

This is where we are introduced to Megan Fox’s character Leila. Leila is a prostitute with no back story, all we know about her is that she saves all her money to buy a piece of land and that she and Jonah Hex have feelings for each other. Leila is really only in the movie for about 10 minutes, and her acting was terrible.

One cool thing about the movie that I enjoyed was Jonah Hex’s ability to speak to the dead. He grips the hand or arm of a dead body and the person comes alive as long as his grip remains. The longer the person stays alive his body begins to burn and turn into ash. After searching for days with no leads Jonah visits the grave of Gen. Turnbull’s son Jeb Turnbull. This is where another actors cameo appears and that is the old Watchmen star Jeffery Dean Morgan as Jeb. So Jeb gives Jonah the location of his fathers facility and then returns to his grave.

Jonah then travels to a military fort in North Carolina and discovers what Gen. Turnbull is trying to build. Before he gets to him he is ambushed and then kills everyone with his dynamite gun( the one in the poster) He loses him but warns the President about his plans to blow up Washington DC.

We see Turnbull testing his Super Weapon. Its pretty much a giant cannon that shoots canon balls into a city. Then it shoots an orange orb (looks just like the dragon ball) into the town and this causes a chemical reaction and blows the city to hell. Turnbull takes his men and loads the weapon on the boat and heads off to blow up Washington D.C.

I dont want to give away the ending but I will say the final showdown between Turnbull and Jonah Hex wasn't very climactic. And honestly that was my biggest problem of the movie was the rhythm of it. It has a good story line but it was not well paced. It was slow for too long so as the viewer you would loose interest in the movie. I wouldn't go as far as saying its the worst cbm ever, but I will say it had so much potential and I honestly was really let down.