BEFORE: I was all set to watch "The Electric Horseman" tonight, but then I got a feeling that I had seen that film before - which is reason enough to put it on the back burner, with some other films that I'm fairly sure I've seen. I'll watch them if I get desperate. (It's a shame - Jason Robards would have linked to Robert Redford so easily, through "All the President's Men"...) Instead I'll go from one comic-book Western hero to another. And I'll link through Christopher Lloyd, who was in "My Favorite Martian" with Jeff Daniels, who was in "Blood Work" with Clint Eastwood, who was in "In the Line of Fire" with John Malkovich (last seen in "Changeling"), the villain in tonight's film.
THE PLOT: The U.S. military makes a scarred bounty hunter with warrants on his own head an offer he cannot refuse: in exchange for his freedom, he must stop a terrorist.
AFTER: Most Westerns use the same playbook, so naturally you might see the same elements again and again - carrying over from last night are Civil War veterans, Indians, trains, justice, revenge, loss of family members, and, of course, President Grant.
But can a Western put these tired elements together in a new way? Well, yes, if the main character can speak to the dead...and the main villain has a cool superweapon (even if I didn't really understand how it worked).
There was a middle section that got a little too metaphysical and symbolic, and I found the action scenes a little hard to follow just because they were so dark (not in tone, I mean they were night scenes and I found it hard to see anything!)
This film didn't dwell as much on the main character's back-story as last night's film, but like "The Legend of the Lone Ranger" it feels like the introduction to a character that never really develops into a full, meaty story. Even given the short running time, it feels like they could have done more with this character. I'm not familiar with the Jonah Hex comic books, but based on this movie, he seems merely like the Punisher transplanted to the Wild West.
Starring Josh Brolin (last seen in "Milk"), Megan Fox (last seen in "How to Lose Friends & Alienate People"), Michael Fassbender (last seen in "Inglourious Basterds"), Aidan Quinn (last seen in "Michael Collins"), Will Arnett (last seen in "G-Force"), with cameos from Wes Bentley, Tom Wopat.
RATING: 6 out of 10 crows
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