Josh Brolin stars as the scarred gunslinger of the title in the action adventure Jonah Hex. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

The history of cinema is rich with stories of films that were thought to be lost, only to suddenly appear in the strangest of places. The original version of Carl Dreyer’s much-revered The Passion of Joan of Arc (1922) was missing for decades before a print was discovered in a janitor’s closet in an Italian mental asylum. The complete three-hour version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) – a seminal work of science fiction that had survived only in damaged, drastically cut forms – turned up in a film archive in Argentina two years ago. A pornographic film reported to be the final picture by Ed Wood Jr. was unearthed in Vancouver in 2004.

This once-promising adaptation of a DC Comics horror western is but a shadow of what might have been.

All of which is to suggest that future film historians may be in for a treat when an unexpurgated version of Jonah Hex is found in some bus-station locker in the year 2067. Released this weekend in a version wounded from obvious studio cuts, this once-promising adaptation of DC Comics’ horror western title is but a shadow of what might have been.

Josh Brolin stars as Jonah, a disfigured Civil War vet turned bounty hunter who has an unusual talent for talking to the dead. He’s enlisted by the U.S. president (Aidan Quinn) to capture Quentin Turnbull (a memorably hirsute John Malkovich), an ex-Confederate general still waging war on the Union by using proto-terrorist tactics like bombing trains full of women and children. That Turnbull also killed Jonah Hex’s family and destroyed his face makes it all personal-like.

At a running time of 81 minutes, the movie is too brisk to be boring, but this two-fisted tale is still a messy waste of money and talent. That will be especially disappointing to those who heard the early buzz when Jonah Hex was in production and still being hyped as a darker, harder-edged variety of comic-book movie, something more akin to Sin City than Spider-Man. As such, it would’ve fit well with the source material.

Megan Fox portrays Lilah in Jonah Hex. (Frank Masi/Warner Bros. Pictures)

Created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga, the original DC character had a hardy cult following since he got his first stand-alone story in an issue of All-Star Western in 1972. The involvement of the gonzo action-movie team of Neveldine & Taylor (Crank) boded well for the film adaptation, at least until they were replaced behind the camera by Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears a Who). Heavy-metal gods Mastodon even signed up to do the soundtrack. Their unholy maelstrom of a score – heard in tandem with more conventional film music by Marco Beltrami – is one of the few elements of the production to emerge relatively unscathed.

The majority of the performances by several familiar actors – Michael Shannon, Will Arnett, Wes Bentley, the great Lance Reddick of The Wire and Fringe – appear to have gone AWOL. So have the bloodier brand of violence, caustic sense of humour and visual panache that survive only in part. The movie needed a lot more of all three.

Jonah Hex’s few good stretches bear less of a resemblance to any current comic-book-derived fare than to the more brutal and stylized strain of screen western developed by Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah in the ‘60s. That’s not surprising given that the character was largely inspired by Clint Eastwood’s surly, nameless heroes in Leone’s spaghetti westerns. With his grisly features and permanent growl, Brolin makes for a half-decent anti-hero who fits into that tradition. While Malkovich sleepwalks through his part as the primary villain of the piece, Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) conveys the right degree of menace as his cackling, tattooed henchman. As for Megan Fox, she continues her career slide with a barely-there turn as Jonah’s sometime squeeze Lilah.

But in a movie like this, the actors’ contributions (or lack thereof) mean less than the quality of the bombast. Unfortunately, that’s where Jonah Hex really fails to deliver. Cluttered and clumsy, the action scenes lack any flair, tension or momentum. Only those on the inside of this troubled production can know whether this hatchet job qualifies as an improvement on earlier, unreleased incarnations. If it doesn’t, then I hope they’ve stored the goods somewhere we’ll find them again.

Jonah Hex opens June 18.

Jason Anderson is a Toronto-based writer.