Isaacs Picture Conclusions

SHITFEST 2014: SUMMER ~ JONAH HEX (2010)

SFSOFFICIAL

BY: DIGITAL SHORTBREAD

DIGITALSHORTBREAD

 

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Shitfest summer ’14 – ‘Jonah hex’

Jonah Hex is a boner-killer, despite a Megan Fox pre-face job.

It is actually almost suicide-inducingly bad. If it were a person it might be Osama bin Laden, or perhaps even Ryan Seacrest. Let me first pose two pieces of information that will probably fuck your mind into thinking it’s being. . .well, fucked with: an IMDb consensus of this movie is 4.6, which is terrible. Okay, maybe Rotten Tomatoes will have a different opinion: 12% critical. 20% audience.

Ppphhhhtttttt. That’s actually even terrible-er!

So those puke-worthy ratings, let them be exhibit A.

Exhibit B, the fucking stacked-ass cast: Josh Brolin, (give-or-take Fox), John Malkovich, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, John Gallagher Jr, Wes Bentley and Michael Shannon.

When you put Exhibit A and Exhibit B together, the facts just don’t goddamn well add up. It’s like Justin Bieber and fame, the two don’t go together, clearly. While this vile filth has successfully slipped into obscurity like a turd after the flush, Jonah Hex must still be hounded for its supreme wasting of everyone’s time, talent and. . . . .tits. Between the horrendous CGI, ass-dragging pace (this, in spite of a brief 81 minute runtime. . .I think that’s with credits, too), and piss-poor performances shrouded in all kinds of awkward lighting, this is very likely one of the most excruciatingly painful films I’ve had the displeasure of sitting through. My god.

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Alright, just breathe Tom. Deep, healing breaths. Deep, healing breaths. . .

Any kind of civil, polite, professional. . .whatever. . . .analysis of this film will be all but impossible, it’s such a craptacular voyage. Adding to the fact it’s a miserably executed tribute to fallen heroes, it’s a miserably executed DC comic adaptation at that. Might we have evidence for the worst hero adaptation of all time? Even with what’s come before in the past, Jonah Hex has this incredible ability to frustrate you that might strike record levels.

Poor old Josh Brolin puts on a brave, brutally scarred face as the mangled bounty hunter out to get some kind of vengeance on the world after he was tied up, branded on the little cheeky-poo and forced to watch the sadistic Quentin Turnbull (Malkovich), a former friend of Jonah’s, burn his house down with his wife and son inside. The moment has all of the gravitas of the hit sitcom Diff’rent Strokes had Mr. Drummond been a black man. Brolin’s hell-bound Hex then somehow manages to be partially resuscitated by a passing tribe of Indians, who essentially bust out a Civil War-era pharmaceutical rape on the guy. Medical malpractice. . .ain’t nobody got time for that shit. Too bad it’s still not all good for Hex as he comes back as a still-hideously disfigured, emotionally gutted man who’s consciousness allows him to be able to communicate with the dead. By touching corpses he can make this connection.

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Ludicrous as this sounds, I have more of a problem with the way the film handles these sci-fi elements. Neither director Jimmy Hayward (Free Birds), nor the guys with the magic digital animation wands, nor any of the screenwriters could seemingly make any of the admittedly bizarro concepts manifest into watchable material. Multiple scenes are drenched in over-satured colors to emphasize the realities Hex can jump between, you know. . .being half-dead and all. This is a completely fucked movie, have I mentioned this?

I’m starting to feel my train of thought running off the rails. . .my brain is apparently wanting nothing of this torture.

Oh yeah, back to the loose assemblage of a plot. . . that, when glanced at more closely, bears a striking resemblance to the loose stool one produces after chugging an ungodly amount of beer the night before. Too much? I don’t know Eric, was that too much? (ED: NOPE!!!!) I personally don’t think this is possible when talking about the ineptitude of this 2011 disaster.

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The film plods for something around 20 minutes — yes, this is to suggest it squanders a quarter of its running time in mind-bogglingly awful boringness, uneasily mixed with cheesy science fiction elements — before getting to some sort of action when Turnbull, who is widely thought to be believed dead when a hotel he was staying in burned to the ground, turns his sights on bombing the crap out of the nation’s Capitol on the Fourth of July. President Incompetent-as-Fuck recruits the battered but not broken Jonah Hex to stop the attack.

Fox mostly gets in the way; Brolin is tolerable but looks pained most of the time, as if knowing the entire time how badly this move and this stupid character is going to hurt his career going forward; Fassbender is basically nonexistent in a thankless (probably thank-god for not having to spend so much effort) role; and Malkovich is serviceable even though his character is despicable and amounts to nothing more than a pile of drama cliches. All of these issues and grievances are mostly slighted against the grade-level writing. Direction ain’t a particular strong point either, but fuck. The writing here, guys, what the fuck.

What the Jonah Hex wrong with these people? Beyond the inexcusable fact they butchered beyond belief a story that might have been watchable purely on the basis of its talent-rich cast, lies the more head-scratching thought that this is intended to be a representation of a DC comic. I’m certainly not among the fandom but god almighty do I feel terrible for that niched group. This is so not the film they need, want nor hoped for.

The filmmakers ought to be subjected to a life of suffering like Jonah Hex for producing this spectacularly awkward non-event.

Recommendation: Ahhh, I think you know what I have to say here, guys and gals. Absolutely, 100% without a doubt in my mind, skip this film that’s purely dedicated to desecration and damned dickish deliverance of dumb. . . I’m running outta words that start with ‘d.’ Jonah Hex will likely put a hex on you if you watch it. I’m also running out of cheesy fucking things to say. This has exhausted me. Piss.

Rated: R (for ridiculously awful)

Running Time: 81 of the longest minutes you’ll spend in a chair

Quoted: “I’m about out of wise-ass answers, my friend.”

68 comments

  4. garylee828

    Good write-up, Tom. I could tell this looked bad on the ads, so never bothered to watch. How do you have a premise like this and screw it up? I mean you really have to put forth some effort to F it up that bad!

    I felt the writers did the same thing to “Cowboys & Aliens”. Great premise. Intriguing first act. Then Harrison Ford showed up – and everything went downhill from that point. And then those goofy aliens and how easy it was to kill them, etc. What happened to Predator? You know quality over quantity? We don’t need a million whimpy aliens. Just give us one solid alien and that is enough for an intriguing villain. Of course, I am sure Cowboys & Aliens was much better than Jonah Hex. They just remind me of one another. Such a waste here of Malkovich’s talent.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Tom

      It honestly wasn’t so much they screwed up a premise. The premise itself was horrendous and cliched and full of holes and the acting was beyond god-awful. Cowboys & Aliens is Oscar-bait in comparison, and I’m being kind. lol. I have yet to see Battlefield Earth but I understand that’s one of the worst films of all time. Ostensibly for more reasons other than how much the production actually stunk. But here the talent on display and the stupidity of this story (and the fact that it was a DC comic, so i guess yeah they did botch the ‘premise’ in that sense — the adaptation is horrid) just add up to quite the headache.

      The one advantage i see to Jonah Hex was its nice, neat little fit into Shitfest Summer ’14!

      Like

      Reply
      • garylee828

        Someone entered Battlefield Earth into SF a couple weeks ago – Tim the Film Guy i think. I wonder which of these 2 is worse. I guess I will never know b/c I don’t plan to ever watch either of them. lol.

        Like

    • Tom

      I am not sure if it was so much astutely picked apart as it was an emotional and vicious tearing apart by me. lol. I had to have some fun with this though. The final cut of Jonah Hex is utterly unforgivably bad man. It really is. It’s a tough one to sit through — and it’s only 81 fucking minutes long!!

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      Reply
  7. Abbi

    God this movie was terrible. It feels so much longer than 81 minutes. The only bit of it which is almost sort of interesting is that he can bring people back from the dead and he only does it twice??

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Tom

      Abbi, it was garbage wasn’t it?? haha. I’m glad to see another having suffered through this. I think I will agree to that part as well. his weird ability to communicate with the dead was perhaps the only inspired concept in this. And even then all the special FX around it was just. . laughable.

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  9. Tom

    Dude — thanks for having me! This was a good bit of fun. Probably one of the harshest and most ridiculous things I’ve gotten to vent in a while. This was as cathartic as I remember it. 😉

    Like

    Reply
    • theipc

      That’s what SHITFEST is all about!!

      THANK YOU TOM!!!

      You have a reprieve / shore leave from your Sadness Blouse until Sunday at noon (my time)!

      Like

      Reply
  13. caragale

    “If it were a person it might be Osama bin Laden, or perhaps even Ryan Seacrest.” LOLOLOLOL. I am very sorry for your suffering, Tom, but this was pretty hilarious. Well done, amigo. As a rule of thumb, I tend to stay away from anything with Megan Fox as a lead…goddamn the Turtles for that casting choice. :/

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    • Tom

      Megan Fox certainly gave the Bay-produced Turtles awfully good insurance against me completely ripping apart that movie. I will be going to see that film, but I will be going BECAUSE OF Fox. 😉 Of course, I’m not going for the acting. I mean, who is? lol

      Good rule of thumb, though. She’s not a good actress. Not really at all. So I completely understand your avoidance of this film too, even despite how good of a cast it has. I guess if there’s one thing about Jonah Hex we can learn, it is that having a good-looking cast absolutely does not guarantee you even a somewhat acceptable film. This honestly comes close to unwatchable. lol

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      Reply
    • Tom

      Well, as a Megan Fox fan, I can’t say she single-handedly destroyed this. No, the writers did.

      Put it to you this way, compared to how the story is handled and how much sense it makes, Fox’s ability to just stand around and look pretty is solid acting. Yeah. I’m serious. 🙂 Thanks for reading Anna!

      Btw sorry I’ve fallen so far behind on Film Gremoire!! I must apologize and get back into rhythm soon. 😀

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  16. garylee828

    Tom, I think if Jonah Hex were a person he may actually be a non-talented hack like Ray J. – or maybe Kim Kardashian. lol.

    At least Ryan Seacrest is great at what he does. I have to respect Seacrest b/c of the effort he puts in his career; on an episode of American Idol a few years back, Hulk Hogan came on as a surprise guest, and Seacrest took a punch from him and flew off the stage and tumbled onto the floor, just like the wrestlers do. I’m quite sure it was rehearsed multiple times before the show, but not every host would attempt a stunt like that. Seacrest would.

    And the ONLY highlight of American Idol last year was on the finale when Seacrest sang “Right Here Waiting” and revealed to the world he is not capable of carrying a tune. Self-deprecating humor is always funny.

    Plus, he’s a huge smart-ass and those are the funniest people to be around. He set Simon Cowell up to be punk’d a few years ago and that was pretty funny; and a couple years back live on AI he took a quick jab at Randy, “You need a new writer” before proceeding to the next contestant. It was funny b/c at the time most of the viewers were complaining about how Randy would say the same thing over and over “In it to win it!” and “We got a hot one, dawg!”.

    And he was hilarious on “Knocked Up” when he played himself working for “E” entertainment and was preparing questions to ask Jessica Simpson for an interview and his producer says “You can’t ask her about her divorce” or about her “Breast implants” and Ryan is like “So, what should I talk to her about – exit strategy out of Iraq?” lol.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
      • Tom

        Yeah, what is this usage of the word ‘arse’ like so? I know not what it means, but its funny.

        And yeah Mark, I wouldn’t rush to see it. I may have destroyed this movie, but I have th feeling some people may still want to see it. I’d have to advise against that lol

        Like

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