Think Will Smith’s Wild Wild West killed the Western? It’s been 11 years since that six-shootin’ silver-screen update of the ’60s TV series misfired, but now former animator Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who!) tramples the genre’s grave with his take on little-known ’70s-era DC Comics bounty hunter Jonah Hex.
Scripted by Crank scribes Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, and starring a game Josh Brolin, this probably looked good on paper. And maybe it looked good on film, too — before it was chopped into a 73-minute (credits add another eight), PG-13 shell of what I imagine will be a longer, unrated “director’s cut” on DVD. Or maybe Hayward simply can’t handle flesh-and-blood actors.
But what can you do with a disfigured antihero who honors the memory of his murdered wife and son by shacking up with a harlot (the recently fired from Transformers 3 Megan Fox, who can’t even conjure a convincing whore)? Save your green and send him to join his clan, that’s what.
