Jonah HexSave

In the post-Civil-War American South, former Confederate soldier Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) — the most feared bounty hunter in the West — is haunted by the murder of his wife and son by Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich), a Confederate commander who killed Hex's family in revenge for Hex murdering Turnbull's son during the war. As Turnbull's brand burned into Hex's face, Hex acquired a supernatural ability to commune with the dead and a half-disfigured face that became his signature trait. The opening establishes Hex as a man defined by his pursuit of Turnbull, who he believes is dead but suspects may be alive.

Hex's bounty-hunting business is interrupted when a federal agent, US Senator Stephen Marshall (Wes Bentley), approaches him with a contract: Quentin Turnbull is alive and is leading a terrorist plot to assassinate US President Ulysses S. Grant on July 4, 1876 — the country's centennial anniversary. Turnbull has acquired a Confederate-era super-weapon — a heat-emitting cannon prototype designed by Eli Whitney during the war — that can vaporise entire cities. The federal government is willing to pay any price to stop Turnbull's plot; Hex is the only man with the personal motivation and skills to do it.

Hex accepts the contract and begins hunting Turnbull. His investigation leads him through multiple Western locations — abandoned railroad towns, Confederate-veteran enclaves, dust-blown desert strongholds. Hex's supernatural ability to commune with the dead becomes his primary investigative tool: he visits multiple Turnbull-victim graves, summoning the deceased to ask them about Turnbull's movements. The film's most-cinematically composed sequences are the ghost-communication scenes, where deceased characters appear in spectral form to deliver lengthy expository dialogue.

Hex's investigation brings him to a brothel in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he encounters his on-and-off lover Lilah (Megan Fox), a sex worker with whom Hex has had a long-running relationship. Lilah, who has been hiding from Hex since their last meeting, helps him track Turnbull's movements. Their relationship is the film's primary romantic subplot; Lilah's commitment to Hex is treated as an act of risk because Hex's enemies repeatedly target Lilah to control him. The two have multiple scenes of vulnerability that Brolin and Fox reportedly developed during pre-production rehearsal.

Turnbull's super-weapon — the Eli Whitney heat cannon — is the film's primary technological threat. Hex discovers that the weapon is loaded onto an armored train heading toward Washington, DC, where Turnbull plans to attack the city during President Grant's centennial address. Hex commandeers a Confederate-era horse-drawn ironclad chase vehicle and pursues the train across the American South. The chase sequences combine practical horseback action with explosive vehicular destruction; multiple practical Confederate-era cavalry horses were used during the chase shoots.

Hex's confrontation with Turnbull on the speeding train is the film's climactic action sequence. The fight takes place across multiple train cars, with Hex's supernatural abilities (he survives multiple gunshot wounds through his connection to the dead) allowing him to outlast Turnbull's mercenary protection. The final one-on-one combat between Hex and Turnbull involves both characters using improvised weapons; Hex eventually defeats Turnbull by tying him to the train's heat cannon as it overheats, vaporising Turnbull in a spectacularly graphic visual sequence.

Hex's victory comes with substantial personal cost. The heat cannon's vaporising explosion has caused widespread damage to the train and surrounding region; multiple federal agents and civilian railroad workers are dead. Hex returns to his bounty-hunting life, but his federal contract — including substantial financial compensation — is permanent. The film's epilogue shows Hex riding into the sunset alone, with Lilah unmentioned and his future uncertain. A planned sequel was reportedly developed but canceled following the first film's commercial failure.