“Jonah Hex” Held Back from More Violence

Revenge gets ugly in the supernatural cowboy movie "Jonah Hex." But it would have been a lot uglier if it wasn't for last minute cuts by the filmmakers to keep the PG-13 rating.

Director Jimmy Hayward said some of the mayhem died on the editing room floor in order to avoid an "R" rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.

"We never had a lot of blood or anything like that," Hayward said of the original version of the film which opens Friday. "It's just that more people died and there was more punching and beatings and stuff like that."

That version of the film received an unwelcome "R" from the board a few weeks ago.

"We had to trim it down a little," Hayward added. "We all agreed that (a PG-13) rating was the way to go."

Speaking at a press conference to support the film, Hayward calls the cuts a "nip and tuck."

"You know how the MPAA is," he said. "Can you have him punch him three times instead of five times."

"So there is certainly is a version of the movie that has a lot of violence in it."

Fear not! This violence will not go wasted. The unedited version will end up on the DVD release.

Josh Brolin, who plays Jonah Hex, said he was originally against the cuts. But in the end "it was a much better decision going PG-13."

He said the added scenes "belong on the DVD" and that they were "not gratuitous."

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