I was a young teenager when Jonah Hex: Two Gun Mojo, showed up on comic book shelves. I was a voracious reader but here was something completely unlike anything I had ever encountered.
Jonah was a western anti-hero created by writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga in 1972. I don’t think anyone could argue that he was maybe one or two steps removed from Clint Eastwood’s poplar movie screen persona as the Man with No Name.
By the 1990s there no western heroes on the stand but Two Gun Mojo, written by Joe R. Lansdale with art by Timothy Truman started a mini revival of the genre. Lansdale and Truman reimagined Hex a bit and gave him supernatural villians and the book was, for a short time, the coolest thing on the stands.
The whole thing didn’t last long but Lansdale built a career that included books, and television and movies.
Mike Mignola, the creator of Hellboy, once said (I think) that his wife wanted him to just create something normal. Just draw superheroes or create a normal story and the cash will keep rolling in. Mignola, instead, created a hell creature that fought other hell creatures. Mignola later said (essentially) that he couldn’t do normal. As a writer and an artist his brain just wouldn’t work that way.
I think that applies to Lansdale as well. I mean, his biggest cultural hit was, for a time, Bubba Ho Tep. A book and later a movie (written and directed by Don Coscarelli) that posits that all those National Enquirer stories were true and Elvis never died, and he was now being stalked by a mummy while trying to live out his final days in a nursing home.
It was a minor hit and celebrated in the kind of fan circles I traveled in in 2002. But that was never going to be a a huge thing. Nobody was going to retire on their Bubba Ho Tep money.
His other successful stab at all of this is the Hap and Leonard book series. Eventually that was made into three seasons of television on The Sundance Network. A riveting crime show and frequently on critics best of the year of list.
But, consider the internet description of two main characters: Hap Collins, “a white working class laborer who spent time in federal prison as a young man for refusing to be drafted into the military and serve in the Vietnam War.”
His best friend is Leonard Pine, “a gay black Vietnam vet with serious anger issues.” Together they solve mysteries and fight crime.
Again, Lansdale has, as near as I can tell, built a nice career for himself with this and his other books.
But my goodness, much as I love this stuff, I would have to admit it’s an acquired taste.
While I’m rambling and before I go further let’s also recommend Cold in July a neo-western based on a Lansdale book and starring Sam Shepard and Don Johnson. You probably never saw it but it’s a cool slice of crime fiction.
Anyway, having proved my Lansdale bonifides and noting that I am always interested in his work even I didn’t make it to the theater last year to see The Thicket.
It was only in theaters for a few weeks, with no advertisements, and when I found it I couldn’t make the hour drive to the big nearby city to catch it. I got kids man.
It’s now on Amazon Prime and most of it is exceptional. Exactly the kind of tough talk and bloody mindedness you want in a movie where Peter Dinklage plays an old west bounty hunter.
As an actor he always delivers and here he gets to be a cowboy who reluctantly helps a young man (Levon Hawke) rescue his sister who was kidnapped by Cut Throat Bill (Juliette Lewis). Dinklage’s reluctance is more less based on a pretty good western trope. To paraphrase: “You haven’t seen violence, boy, and I have and it should be avoided at all costs.”
You know, that thing. As motivations go it’s a winner.
The other, is that the pay won’t be worth the risk. Again to paraphrase: “I might risk my life for something, but it won’t be some woman I don’t know and one third of $300.”
That was another excellent bit of business.
When we meet Dinklage’s character someone is trying to make fun of his height and cheat him out of money owed. You can guess how that conflict ends.
Meanwhile, Cut Throat Bill is mostly off in her own little movie doing an excellent job at being menacing, creepy and crazy. I suspect Juliet Lewis spent some time watching Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh.
It’s a movie that falls into a particular category for me which is: if this is the kind of thing you like then I think you will like this thing.
It succeeds and I enjoyed it but I would also tell you it has modest ambitions. A decent exercise in genre work that squeezes some fun out of Dinklage and Lewis being old west killers.
The movie cooks a bit when we hear a sermon from a doomed priest explaining Cut Throat Bill’s backstory. And again when her part of the tale concludes. Her final words in the movie is haunting.
So the movie gets to a really top shelf sort of place. But it doesn’t get there often and it doesn’t stay there.
Spoiler below:
The conclusion follows through with the warnings about how all this violence will end. And what the pursuit of righteousness in the face of evil might cost.
Ultimately, we are presented with a happy ending … for the survivors.
Dark Highways 