Midweek Mention... Jonah Hex

So we can argue about who's which one's midweek and which not. We never did specify. No, are we going are we going ageist and saying The newest one is always like the the main feature, isn't it? So this would make Jonah Hex our midweek mention because it's two years older. And what was the motivation for picking this classic? Well Well a lot of people are saying this movie's better than true grit. So Well, I've never heard of anything to do with any of this. This material it was literally Dan, it's your choices. Yeah. And that came out of the city. Well, you had to do two play. You did have step in late because Riggs bottled it. Yeah. But this is what I didn't want to say. But this is from what I can tell by looking at it, this is based on a true event, right? This is based on the stuff. Yes, that's true. Yeah, yeah, it's true. DC comics. And uh and then I chose this because actually I I thought of Chris. Because it's really, really short. Yeah. Alright. It's one hour twenty-one, this this is. Yeah. And uh Chris, you were a big fan of the crank series, weren't you? And this was written by Neville Dean and whatever they were called, Neville Dean and Switzerland. Oh really? Okay. I I feel bad now for not watching this. I just listened to well, you may change your opinion on that. I've listened to Sidey and he said, Oh, don't bother. I'd be fair, I didn't have to. That was today. That was the earliest. No, no, yeah, that was today, so it's not like uh no, that was today. Uh Mark Neville Dean and Brian Taylor. Yes. Roger's brother. Yes. Is he any relation to the snooter player, Dennis? Yeah, that's his uncle. All of them. Yeah, all the tailors are. And talking to Taylors, we were thinking about getting a suit cut, weren't we? Because I've I'd got my tailored trousers. You've got your bespoke outfit on, yeah. Got these made just your trousers are like the cut and shut between these one type of trousers, and then in the middle they've sort of inserted something to 30 years old, these are rigs. Yeah. And uh for the I know £2.25 I paid for them back in the day. That's value. That is value. That is value, yeah. I designed and got these made. But we're not here to talk about my rather fetching flare trousers. We are talking about Joan Hex, believe it or not. Which Dan comically described as Johan Hex in the uh trailer, which gave me a much different mental image than this one. Yeah, is not as uh Scandinavian sounding as that, is it? But this one's about a Confederate war hero. Yes. He so you get in the first 90 seconds of action, you get his origin story where he has killed so the cast is is pretty sensational. Josh Brown, Malkovich Malkovich, Megan Fox, Michael Fassbender, Will Onette, Michael Shannon, Stephanie D. Morgan, Lance Reddick, and he has so Jonah Hex played by Josh Brown, he has killed John Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich's family. Yeah. And so in a fit of revenge, they s they sort of string him up on a big They killed his son. Killed his son, yeah. And and Malkovich says, You've killed my everything I love, so I'm gonna kill everything you love and make you watch. And he's strung up in a sort of cross. And they Joseph Wells, they burn down a house with the wife and the son in it and make him watch and thrash around and it's quite fierce, isn't it? Yeah, it's quite but they do it in about 30 seconds. And then it goes into uh sort of animating. He's banged on his face, isn't he? Yeah, they they do they do a quick cause they they obviously cute Quentin Turnable. They they brand him on the cheek and then he Malkovich's It goes into uh an animated kind of comic strip bit for this bit, and they very quickly explain that he can talk he can sixth sense, he can talk to dead people. Okay. So he's not like Hellboy. I don't think I remembered this, but Hellboy can dig up a corpse. Exactly like that, yeah. Yeah, so what what had happened and I I found out then in this kind of part of the film, right at the beginning it's DC Comics. I didn't as a character I didn't know. But he was revived by uh Native American Indians and By smoking the peace pipe basically. By smoking the peace pipe where he inhaled it and load of crows and things come into the Yeah, they they sort of like almost just plagiarised the crow little thing. Yeah, that's about to say, isn't it about sort of taking loads of established Western tropes and then making it really kind of in this cartoonishly over-the-top supernatural world. And uh he then is becomes a bounty hunter because uh he finds out that Quentin Turnbull actually died in a fire, which meant that he couldn't kill him, so now he just roams around looking uh you know zero fucks. Yeah. He's just gonna go and kill anybody for money. He's got a load of crows that follow him. Well, no, it they do at certain moments, they they're kind of conjured up it. You do get the feeling that there was probably a lot of stuff left on the cutting-room floor and or the movie had four different directors or something stupid as well, didn't it? I don't know about that, but it had a lot of reshoots as well. Yeah, it's sometimes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Megan Fox is introduced to us as the most unbelievably hot-looking prostitute in the Wild West. They probably had no teeth and had like some main diseases and she's unbelievably hot looking. Her waist when you first see her. Well, a real prostitute won't have washed in a month. You could probably get your your hand around her waist like that. I mean, it's of course like ridiculous. And she looks immaculate, albeit I think they sprayed a little bit of water on it to make her look sweaty, but she's sleeping with a guy who's obviously smitten with her, and she's kind of like so she's shown to be like a bit of a badass, and then she she's obviously shagging Jonah Hex as well, so that's there's like a the sort of connection. He comes in first, doesn't he? You kind of meet the badass that he is, and he he's got three the the Clayton brothers. Of course it's the Clayton brothers, like there's no Clayton. And they they're being dragged by the back of his horse, all dead, and he goes, speaks to the big fat sheriff of the town, he says, Well, you know, if you just pay me my money and I'll be on my way, and they're saying, Oh, well, the weapon pence for this, and he's bringing out all the kind of classic like mare talk and lawyer speak, lawyer speak, and and old-timey kind of American Western speak, and he says, Well, there was four of 'em, basically, and he throws him ahead, and he goes, The other one was too fat to carry on the horse, like you know, so they go he throws it down. But they've got no intention of paying him, they're gonna ambush him and kill him. So we realise how badass he is then. It's at this point he brings out a Gatling gun on the side. On either side of the other. This was the bit I really remembered, and it's partially fond of this movie was thinking of the Gatling guns on all the side. So this is 1876. But like you say, a true story. Dan is saying there's still some kind of high-tech, high-ish tech weaponry. So he's got these he's mounted these two Gatling guns to the side of his horse. And later on he goes back to see Lawrence Riddick, yeah, who has that great way of looking down, like looking up, you know, like that. He doesn't wire quite a lot. And he he's like his armorer, he goes into the back room of his shop and he's got all these other like mad guns that you've never seen like in the West, they're just made for and it that got me thinking about the Wiki Wiki World Wild West, which also had this kind of steampunk kind of Wild West. It's like he's he's the West is a great movie. From Smith and Weston, you know, I guess he i it's that kind of you know, there is lots of tropes in it, there's lots of connections. He he shoots everyone, guy comes, you know, hiding in a coffin, guy by the big bell or the the town and everything, uh shoots the bell ringing in his ears, then he's got a clear shot. All those kind of things you've seen before. It's all brought in. Uh he goes to visit Megan Fox, who knows him. He's got this terrible scar. Yeah. So this is a good thing. Do people talk about that? Or not really. No, I mean there's a there's a couple of uh Oh, what'd you do to your face? Caught myself shaving jokes and and that kind of thing. He takes zero uh like shit off anyone. This one guy draws a knife on him from across the bar, he just shoots him while he's drinking. While he's drinking, doesn't slow him down. He's uh he does he's zero fucks like throughout the film. His his family have been killed, but to give some stakes to the movie, that's really all that Megan Fox is what's her name? Lila? Lila or Tulia. She goes by two different names in the film. So he's sleeping with her, so she will eventually become like a plot device to get him most of the. To give him something to do, because his family are dead, so But it turns out that Turnbull, who who is Malkovich, who had killed his family, he's not actually dead. That's right. And he's developing he's developing some kind of Nuclear Weapon. Super nuclear weapon that can he the way he describes it is destroy entire continents. I don't know why you'd want to do that. Because for now we'll just have to do you know, and then he demonstrates it on they look like enormous cannonballs that he fires into this frontier town. And then there's a golden orb that so when people then go out and they're like, What's going on? Why are these things landing in our town? And whilst they're all out there, then they they those get detonated by this golden orb. It's like completely inexplicable. Okay. And that these he's watching from up high with his cronies who one of them the his ring his main number two is Michael Fassbender and a I suppose everyone has to do what they need to do to like make it in Hollywood fucking terrible. Yeah, it looks a bit more. Really? Yeah, yeah. He looks like a a guy from uh from Moby Dick, you know, the guy who had the the kind of tattoos in Moby Dick. And uh Yeah, they're you know, battling around and and making their their way through. There's a guy that gets a bit too touchy-feely with a Megan Fox and she puts him into his place, and you know that she's badass as well. And he r after he realizes that isn't it Will O'Neill's character is Lieutenant Glass, and he they know all about uh Turnbull, and he has to try and recruit Johan and tells him staff and blah blah blah. And this is where we get to see him first demonstrate his kind of supernatural power where there's a guy in a coffin and he grabs him and he's like completely decomposed and mean and he grabs him and the guy the the the the VFX for this are actually really good. The guy springs back to life and he's able to interrogate dead people. We never get to see Well, like the corpse is reanimated, yeah. Not as in like as a talking zombie, they go fully back to being human. Oh right. But we never get to see what the people watching see. Right. He just drops them back down and as soon as it goes back onto the ground, that it goes back to being a decomposed body. And so he he's able to get, you know, some intel of people that one of them is uh They can't stay out too long because they start to burn as if they were vampires the other way around. And we know that it's also 100 years coming up, there's gonna be a big thing in New York after 100 years of America being in place, like you know, make America great again. Make America grow again. And that is what a Malfrich Malfritch is is plotting to blow up. Oh right. Yeah, to rule Hamza anyway. Yeah. In the end age of the seat stuff now. They well not in the end. First of all, Hermel sends off what's F Aspen's character called Burke. He sends Burke off to kidnap Megan Fox. And he knocks her around a bit first, actually. Alright. Find me something that there was something else going on because there's another guy, she had another regular who'd come back and she ended up stabbing him. I think that was maybe just to show us that she was a badass. But he knocks her around and then kidnaps her, and that's the leverage they've got because Johan liked to shag this particular prostitute, and so he has to go and rescue her or something. The old noble prostitute trope. Yeah, and and then they show this factory setup that Turnbull's got where they're manufacturing somehow in the Wild West these It's not a new I don't know what It's like a uh a a cannonball that glows up and it it's when it hits It's got some kind of weird source of energy in it, but this movie is eighty minutes long. Yeah. So it's like barely makes any sense. Yeah. But we know now at this point, the only person that can stop him, so says the president of the United States, is played by uh the guy in the world. I recognized him, I can't think of whatever his name was. Um it's Aidan Gillen, isn't it? Aidan yeah from Game of Thrones. Oh yes, Ulysses S. Grant is is the president. And uh well he was an actual president, so yeah, that's the I was just trying to think who what it would be. Yeah, so say based on a true story. Yeah. And uh he's said you go and find Johan. Johan. He's the only one that can stop him. And then he just goes off on his own and he although he's reenacted back into the army because he says, Look, no chance, I'm not going back into the army. They say Quentin's alive. And he goes, What, Quentin Tarantino? He goes, No, it's not Quentin Tarantino, it's Quentin Turnbull. Yeah. And uh he says, Right, I'm after him then, I'm on his case. He starts reading dead people's bodies, he goes to Turnbull's son, which was his best friend, yeah. And he digs him up and he says, Long time, Jed, not seen you in a long time. He goes, they start fighting, he goes, Look, you've only got a few seconds, right? Yeah, you haven't got long ear, like you know, kids. You are actually dead, yeah. And he goes, Oh, well, what is it? And he goes, I've been watching you, you're a monster, yeah. My old man's no good either. Okay, look, he can see where his dad is because he's got that connection. So even though he's the big, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because his plot needs him to. So then they say, right, he's standing at the old quarry, or it wasn't, but it might as well have been. And there then they they kind of fight off. They beat each other off. They they beat each other's hands. He's also warned that when he does eventually snuff it, Johan, there's plenty of people waiting in the off-like. In hell for good times away all around. So what he then he beats up everyone match is matched. He gets shot. He gets shot point blank in the chest. I did not see that coming. No, neither did I. And I also I didn't really still, after it happened, understand because I wasn't I thought this uh was the flashback to when he first came back. But it's the second time. But it's the s he he's so he's re-resurrected by the peace pipe this time. He's got all the shotgun. And where we see them on the crack pipe again and him inhaling it whilst he's out, and then a a smoke crow comes out of his gob. Yeah. Yeah. And then I think it becomes a real crow later on. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a it's a it's a crow that comes out of his mouth and that's all the big things. And now he's got crow p crowd. A crow in his throat. Yeah. And once he got that out, he was he was fine to go and start battle again and rescue Megan Fox, who now is by this time. So what have we got some sort of big sort of half-hearted CGI final of like Well, first of all, he kills Burke. That fight is really anticlimactic. He kills Fastbender. Re rescues Megan Fox. Yeah. But then they together they they take down Didn't I mi did I miss the part where they stop the glowing orb cannons? Yeah, there's an axe that's thrown just as the the globe's about to get loaded into the uh the blade of the axe just stops it. And now there's just Malkovich to run. Well, and then they kind of jump out the boat that there's floating towards the big celebration. Uh it happens to be around the 4th of July. Uh so the uh boat that blows up and they just get out of uh at the same time. In fact, it blows up and then you see them jump. Um it was that close. Um people watching see all the explosions going off. They think it's fireworks. They think it's fireworks. Do they? Even though that there's there's already been one kind of explosion um the tower. Um Ulysses gives them a pardon. He offers in the job of Sheriff of the United States. That's it. That's pretty big patch. Big job. He says I don't know. He says it would he's not he can't be respectable. No like Melon Kim. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I do, yeah. He goes, I don't think that's really a job, but and leaving it open for another sequel, you know where I am. Sorry to report that we never got that. That is a shame. Well, it's still how was Malkovich Malkovich Malkovich in this? Was he bad? Really bad, just uneventful, or because usually a Malkovich performance has got something to it. Flooning it in. Yeah. Yeah, he's sort of like his uh he's more mega than his line of fire character. He's got a great board long. Oh, now you're talking. Yeah, that was probably the highlight of the film, to be honest. I didn't think this was this bad. I'd be like, It's really bad. Dan, this is really bad. Contenders are the worst ever. I'm gonna say it's contender for the worst ever. It's not as bad as cats, but it's it's the top five worst that I've ever watched with podcasts. Well, I'm I'm not saying that. No. It's a comedy. I was lying on the couch watching it, and then it was it was really bad, so I got my iPad out and I was like, make notes on it. And then I and then I had my phone as well. How far away from like the level of say Ghost Rider is this? You know, that's what I'm conjuring up. Same same level. Okay. Well I can tolerate it. It's from an era when they hadn't figured out how to make a good comic book adaptation. Yeah. I mean, they really hadn't. It came out on the same day as Toy Story 3. Yeah. Which is, you know, fucking excellent. And is Toy Story 3 better than this movie, would you say? It just edges it. Yeah. What year was it? 2010. Fuck me. It's not even that long ago, really, when you think about it. It really isn't. And I think there's the kernel of a good idea in there, isn't there, with the sort of supernatural Western thing. I think if they tried to make it now, you know, with that cast again. Just get everybody again. But now that people are more on board with comic book adaptations and they know how to make them work, then someone also this was the director's first it wasn't his first film, but it's his first live-action film. It's the first time he'd ever seen a film. No. And it obviously was problematic. That all the cast panned it at Megan Fox, then later retracted and said that her performance in it was actually quite good. No one else's, but hers was good. That was a nice thing for her to say about herself, wasn't it? Uh Mastodon did the score. Yeah. So what heavy metal? Heavy metal, not always. It's not always heavy, but the battle sequences are quite heavy, as you'd expect. It's not good. I didn't think it was as bad. Certainly ghost rider level, you know. If we're pitching it somewhere, if I enjoyed, you know, I think it's a good one. Yeah, I mean it was like the Nick Cage thing. Yeah. Oh yeah, that was good. That was alright. It was okay. Like to me, the westerns, they are famously in a particular place and time in the world, and when you try and make them into something else, yeah, you better do a good job with that, otherwise it just looks really bad. So wait, have you ever seen sorry, have you ever seen that thing with the James Bond when he's a cowboy and he fights the aliens? Yeah, cowboys and aliens. Have you seen that one? Yeah. I saw that cinema. And is it that level? This is way worse than that. Is it? Yeah, yeah. That wasn't great either. No, that wasn't amazing. No, no, no. I don't uh remember seeing that one. But uh for me, this was not great. Yeah. Certainly not, but it was short. There was action about it. There was a Megan Fox who was looking smoking the way through. Josh Brolin was decent enough, like as the I think if if it was if it was a lesser actor, this would have been a career. Well I like yeah, yeah, but I like enough about him, isn't it? He's got enough about him to to make it because he's so handsome on the handsome side of his face and so horribly scarred on the other. Ugly on the on the other side. I mean, because you made made you think, what the hell would Megan Fox be looking at like she's a prosy, no? Yeah, but she she wants to at one point uh you know run off with his wound and he's just in cure. He doesn't want to see it. Even his face Wendy eats. Can you see through to his you can see through to his face? Well, what I was gonna say was when you've got a Harvey Two-face in Dark Knight, yeah. Like it's nowhere near as good as that. Okay. It's come on along since then. He is essentially a patchy bit on his cheek and then he has one strand where it's where his mouth is, he has one strand of skin. Yeah. Coming says a little gap. Just over the corner. So if he was eating soup, it would pour out. It would pour out the soup. Like when you've been to the dentist and they've frozen half of your mouth and you have a drink and it kind of dribbles out. That's yeah, that's what it would be like. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Which was yeah, much how I watched this film really just driven in the opposite side. It wasn't, it certainly wasn't like something that I would say go and rush out and watch now. But I think the worst film ever seems a little bit extreme as well. I I think so. It's in the top five worst I've seen for the pod. Wow. That is close to the street. If you want to watch a good Western movie revenge film, watch Outlaw Jesse Wells. Yeah, well, this isn't that. This is like a fantasy kind of and the first season of Preacher, maybe. If you want to get Western horror supernatural. Yeah, you want to take a genre thing and make it a bit different than Preacher's game. Yeah. But I'd not heard of this character before and DC Gohan Hex. Gohan Hex. You'll leave, you'll leave. And I yeah, I'm not surprised they haven't rushed out with a a sequel. Well, I think it was probably a big floppy as well. Was it? Have you got the uh it was 47 million reported production budget with a 10.5 million pound return. So all it lost was 30 odd million pounds. Yeah, but that doesn't include marketing either. So you win some, you lose some, you lose some lost to lose. So it's not better than TrueGrit. It's not. Either version, no. Chris, do you think on the balance of what you've heard you will seek it out? Probably, yeah. Strong recommend. Go for it.