Not Too Bad

Another DC Comics hero gets a workout inJonah Hex, the movie incarnation of DC's scar-faced bounty hunter, played here by Josh Brolin. Out to exact revenge on the varmint who wrecked his face and killed his family, Jonah also gets yanked back into the service of his country--against his will, of course. Said varmint, Quentin Turnbull, is played by John Malkovich, although the more spirited villainy is provided by Turnbull's tattooed Irish assistant (Inglourious Basterds's Michael Fassbender plays the part with the kind of energy noticeably absent from the other cast members). In this 80-minute hodgepodge of a movie, Jonah regularly checks in with his lady friend, a prostitute (Megan Fox) whose bordello room has a remarkable amount of glamour lighting, and in his spare time investigates Turnbull's plot to use a super weapon against Washington, D.C. By giving Jonah a halfway-interesting supernatural talent--he can talk with the dead, by placing his hands on them--the film adds a kicky new wrinkle, but it's not enough to improve the mangled storytelling or the sleepwalking pace. Brolin's makeup is impressive, but in scarring his cheek and pulling his mouth back in a grotesque grimace, the prosthetics designers have robbed the actor of any ability to express himself through speech. Kind of a miscalculation there, and typical of this movie's tendency to shoot itself in the face.--Robert Horton