Film Review: The Lone Ranger

If you treat The Lone Ranger as Pirates of the Caribbean meets the wild west or as a slapstick, tongue in cheek, mismatched buddy western then you will like it

If you treat The Lone Ranger as Pirates of the Caribbean meets the wild west or as a slapstick, tongue in cheek, mismatched buddy western then you will like it, for the most part. If you are after more substantial or original movie fare, forget about it.

Having never seen an episode of the television series and without knowing anything more than The Lone Ranger was some kind of masked outlaw on a white horse with a the famous theme song, I had no real preconceived notions about what the movie should or shouldn’t be. As such I allowed myself to go with the (loose) storyline and be somewhat entertained by the inane spectacle on screen.

Disney’s latest blockbuster tells the story of how attorney John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man who abstains from guns and alcohol and resolute in his belief the letter of the law will successfully deal with the outlaws running rampant in the wild west, transforms into the mask-wearing vigilante dubbed The Lone Ranger. After people close to him are butchered by the villain of the film, Butch Cavendish a man whose face is as disfigured as his soul, and nearly dying himself, Reid finally gets what Tonto (Johnny Depp playing the Native American sidekick) has been harping on about, that only by taking the law into your own hands will you truly achieve justice (hmmm, this may not be what the film set out to say, but it’s the message I got).

Tonto is as nutty and absurd as only Depp can make him, wearing a dead bird on his head the entire movie while walking around half naked with white and black war paint on his face. After reluctantly joining forces, Reid and Tonto set out to avenge the death of Reid’s brother and rescue his widow Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) and son Danny from the clutches of Cavendish all the while trying to figure out how to thwart railroad executive Cole (Tom Wilkinson) and his desire to invade Commanche Indian territory in the name of progress. There are train chases, train derailments, train chases, train derailments and did I mention train chases interspaced with bickering bromance, extensive set pieces and the hero’s steed Silver appearing in very un-equiney places (a branch of a tree, the roof of a barn, the roof of a train). And it seems wherever Depp goes these days, Helena Bonham Carter appears. In this outing she is a brothel owner with a wooden leg in which she conceals a shotgun to fire off when one of her girls needs protecting.

Although the film is titled The Lone Ranger it feels as if Tonto gets most of the screen time, which stands to reason as Depp is the biggest name in the film. Old Tonto, or rather the mannequin of a Noble Savage on display at a sideshow carnival, also acts as the narrator coming to life to relate his and The Lone Ranger’s adventures to a young boy. Unfortunately this mechanism of flashback story-telling detracts from what little momentum the film manages to gather, feeling out of place and superfluous and adding time to an already long movie.

The Lone Ranger is well and truly family fare. It makes no attempt to be gritty or edgy and the violence is relatively bloodless. Kids will get a bigger kick out of the elaborate, CGI enhanced stunts and the physical comedy of Hammer and Depp than adults but the film does its best to establish the origin stories of Reid and Tonto and provide some laughs along the way. It is the big budget, slick looking production we’ve come to expect from the team behind Pirates and Disney clearly has its fingers crossed it has another franchise in the making. However, I think it’s going to be a hard sell to ask people who don’t know or care about the exploits of The Lone Ranger to even watch his adventures once, let alone two or three times.

Just as Johnny Depp doesn’t watch his own films, this is one movie you don’t need to race to see, it’s fine to save it for a ‘lone’ night in at home.

THE LONE RANGER
Directed by: Gore Verbinski
Written by: Jerry Bruckheimer
Cast: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer
Released by: Walt Disney