Jonah Hex: so bad it is good

John Malkovich is the incarnation of evil in this spoof, which is so camped up it's good.

Jonah Hex

Director: Jimmy Hayward

Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox

This spoof is camped up so far to the nines that it's almost good. Actually, it's beyond good, after you get past the crazy accent that Josh Brolin puts on in his starring role as a new-age cowboy. The whole premise is that he's unspeakably ugly, because he's been branded with a near-molten iron rod in a horrible act of cowboy vengeance. But, naturally, a sublime woman is tending to his every whim.

He's about 55, and she 23. He is also the avenging angel of whatever wrong was perpetrated on him, somewhere in the wild west, back in the day, a hundred or so years ago. So we get him, leaning back in bed, a little bit like Gary Cooper in High Noon while Grace Kelly waits in the wings, wondering what will be his next act of justice. Meanwhile, John Malkovich is simpering in the background, the lisp in his voice somehow hinting at the violence he's about to carry out.

The very incarnation of evil, he is wonderful, but must have fallen on hard times because this stuff is dire. Anyhow, it's all about the classic, high camp form he is in. He comes alive as a lisping degenerate, the hero of this comic-book creation, taken from the book that inspired it: Hex, by the legendary DC Comics. As Donald Rumsfeld almost said, there's bad-good, there's good-bad, but this is very much at the high end of what's so bad it's good.