Dead on arrival: Jonah Hex

A long time ago, in the days before plastic surgery, confederate super-solider Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) sees his family roasted alive at the hands of the super-evil Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) before being left dangling from a cross with a nasty facial disfigurement that will make the consumption of beverages forever cumbersome. As the days pass Hex gets so close to expiry that even when the noble Crow Indians revive him he retains the ability to converse with the dead, a gruesome parlor trick that comes in handy in his new vocation as half-zombie bounty hunter. So Johan Hex is a supernatural western of sorts, based on the DC comic that I only remember because my uncle Ricky used to give me his copies after he’d read them, along with his old Sgt. Rocks. (Is it just me, or did only middle-aged bachelors buy all those war and western comics back in the 1980s?)

Jonah Hex was directed by the guy who brought us Horton Hears a Who. It was written by William Farmer and the guys behind the Crank franchise, which is only slightly more indicative as to what’s in store. Jonah Hex is about as dumb as the Crank movies, and it shares the Crank movies’ particular brand of exaggerated, cartoonish violence, yet it has nothing of the go-for-broke audacity or absurd digressions that arguably distinguish the Cranks somewhat from the rest of your sub-Guy Ritchie actioners. There’s not much going on in Jonah Hex, which results in its merciful brevity—it runs about an hour-twenty—yet also results in a paucity of characterization that renders the potentially colourful leads one-dimensional and shuttles those handy Crow Indians so far into the background as to make them crude functionaries, yet another variation on the “magical negro,” merely happy to help the white hero along his journey before dissolving back into the woods.

The score could be described as Metallica meets Morricone, though once having met they apparently have to say to one another. Even under rubber Brolin maintains charisma, yet he really has little to do other than grunt and take heaps of punishment. Malkovich has a new funny wig to add to his collection but otherwise is unremarkable in another payday villain role. Megan Fox plays the prostitute who apparently spends her free time at the rifle range and it’s true she has very nice legs. Her close-ups however are only one of many shots in the movie that seem digitally enhanced for absolutely no reason at all. At least Michael Fassbender has some fun as an inventively tattooed thug.

The war at home: Gran Torino

Gran Torino can be read as a sort of western, and not just because of the immense presence of its iconic director and star. Maybe Walt Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) is an old soldier looking for a new war. He served in Korea, worked most of his life at a Ford plant, raised kids who are now middle class twerps and virtually estranged. He’s newly widowed, but continues to live alone, save his pooch, in the family house in some corroded suburb in the industrial wasteland of Detroit, where he mows the lawn, does small repairs, sucks back can after can of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the porch, and works hard to keep others away, sometimes with a snarl and a growl, sometimes with a gun. Always with a string of racist slurs.

But Gran Torino, written by Nick Schenk, is among other things the story of Walt’s redemption. Thanks partly to the awkward machinations of the script, but thanks to a greater degree to Eastwood’s particular integrity, this redemption will not come easily. Walt’s encounters with his Hmong immigrant neighbours, the kids especially, will force him to bust his cloistered existence. Teenage siblings Sue (Ahney Her, who tends to swallow her words but is so utterly the character) and Thao (Bee Vang) engage Walt, the former through smart talk, a preternatural insight into curmudgeonly psychology and offerings of delicious Hmong chow, the latter by trying to steal Walt’s prized Gran Torino under pressure from his gangbanger cousins. Walt finds new purpose as Sue and Thao’s protector and will ultimately stop at nothing to ensure they get a fighting chance to wriggle free of the ghetto. He’s an old hand at intimidation, so why should some stupid punks with tattoos and guns worry him? I can’t claim that I buy how it all goes down, but that doesn’t meant it’s not a story worth telling.

Eastwood manipulates his star image brilliantly. He knows the audience sees Dirty Harry up there, that we associate him with vengeance and vigilantism, and he lets all these extra-filmic elements hover around him and feed the tension. Though his directorial work can sometimes slip into implausibility and half-baked sentiment, Eastwood likes his stories tough. And he’s that rare mainstream American filmmaker who tries to make movies about what it means to live in America today. This alone is a reason to if not treasure at least respect his body of work. Rather than mindlessly celebrate his country’s puffed-up triumphalism, Gran Torino surveys a corner of the US that resembles a third world shit hole more than some glorious embodiment of ambition and affluence.

Whatever promise of a better world can be gleaned in Gran Torino must be found in the margins, in the implication that even the least tolerant of us, the disdainful dinosaurs who cling to antiquated notions of masculinity and tribalism, might be lured back into active engagement with others. The film trades in cliché. It cheats here and there to get Walt to the finish line. But Walt himself, which is to say Eastwood the conservative closet humanist, is never less than riveting, and it’s the throwaway moments he shares with his unexpected new friends that are the film’s finest and most affecting. There might just be hope for my cranky old uncle Rick yet. I just hope the movie plays in Gananoque, Ontario, so he can see it.