Directed by James Hayward. Starring Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Arnett, Michael Shannon, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Wes Bentley, Tom Wopat, Aidan Quinn 15A cert, gen release, 81 mins
FAST, CHEAP and out of control, Horton Hears a Who(!) director James Hayward brings DC Comics' ultraviolent western antihero to the big screen with all the nuances we might have expected from a film featuring Megan Fox as a frontier brothel madam. The chaotic results will provide temporary relief for genre fans who simply can't wait for Ivan Kavanagh's Where We'll Never Grow Old. Mostly, however, Jonah Hexfeels more like a post-Red Dead Redemption movie rather than a post-Peckinpah one.
Throughout, to be fair, the muddled plot offers plenty of enjoyably ludicrous incidents. The maimed Jonah (Josh Brolin) sees his family die at the hands of his former Confederate general Quentin Turnball (John Malkovich) but is nursed back to health by Indians who, characteristically for movie injuns, endow their charge with superpowers. Jonah must now roam the earth as a scarred bounty hunter with a lot of bad mak-up and a talent for communing with the dead.
Soon enough (the story gets a bit jumpy here) he is dispatched by President Ulysses S Grant (Aidan Quinn) to track down arch-nemesis Turnball before the disgruntled villain launches steampunk weapons of mass destruction at the forthcoming US centennial celebrations.
Featuring what looks like a compromised length (81 minutes including anime inserts?), this post-Civil War fantasy is not without its pleasures. There's a good meta-joke in the similarities between Brolin's performance as a marauding pale rider psychopath and Josh Brolin's performance as George W Bush in Oliver Stone's underrated W. And Michael Fassbender, channelling Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange, deserves a Stalin-sized statue for is work as Malkovich's demented, tattooed Irish sidekick.
Too often, however, Jonah Hextrips on its own determination to be down with the kids. The Mastadonsoundtrack, far from being innovative, recalls Tommy Lee's work on Pamela Anderson's Barb Wire. The animated segments, though stylish, look rushed. The allusions to the "War on Terror" couldn't feel more hackneyed.
Specialised audiences may appreciate how gloriously trashy it is, but mainstream punters are unlikely to connect with Jonah Hex’s flair for unnecessary quotation and all those empty, empty signifiers.
