Jonah Hex [Blu-Ray]

When a film has a lot of mealy exposition and repetitive travelling or location proximity establishing, it will employ an elliptical editing style with non-diegetic voiceovers to truncate two lifeless scenes with dual-purpose vitality. If used, most filmmakers will toss it in once or twice in an effort to keep things energized in between set pieces or plot points. In Jonah Hex, they use this technique approximately 15 times, which, when you consider that this comic book adaptation is only 80 minutes in length, takes up the bulk of the story, making the entire thing seem more like a really long, repetitive trailer than an actual movie. Amidst this array of droning, forgettable footage, we learn that Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) got his distinctive facial scar from politically confused villain Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) after being forced to watch his wife and children die in a fire. Years later, when Turnbull decides to wreak havoc on innocent citizens in an effort to create generalized anarchy, President Grant (Aidan Quinn) hires the reluctant Hex to put a stop to it. Incidentally, Hex can talk to dead people and occasionally uses a whore named Lilah (Megan Fox) as a personal depository. While talking like a cross between Bubba Blue and Sling Blade, our cowboy antihero travels from town-to-town, occasionally shooting people with creative weaponry, while Turnbull blows shit up. No actual characterization occurs and no plot emerges beyond the obvious track-and-kill scenario. Beyond the loud, but surprisingly flat, action sequences, a great deal of energy is expended in building up the various kills, whether they are gunshots to the head, decapitations or mutilation by wild animal. But since the film was awkwardly cut for a PG-13 rating, even this fails, since these scenes always cut away just before the actual kill, often without any sense of grace or transition. One can only assume that this came from constant re-edits, tweaking and generalized production apathy. The Blu-Ray comes with a picture-in-picture supplement, with discussions about the original comic and actor interviews, where Malkovich unenthusiastically points out that the script needed some reworking. There is also a separate featurette on "The Inside Story of Jonah Hex," which rehashes much of the picture-in-picture information relating to the comic origins.