The Lone Ranger

Reviews from the Dark Side presents
 The Lone Ranger
Released 7/3/13, now in theaters

Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp ride into theaters this week in The Lone Ranger.  This Disney-sponsored epic is brought to you courtesy of producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, and director, Gore Verbinski, the team behind the Pirates of the Caribbean series.  Helping to give the classic hero a facelift are Tom Wilkinson, Helena Bonham Carter, and William Fichtner.  In a summer filled with highly anticipated movies, few are bigger than this.  Will it live up to the hype or fall off the horse (get it?  Lone Ranger...horse? forget it)?

San Francisco, 1933.  A young boy dressed as a cowboy complete with outlaw mask and cap pistol wanders into the Wild West tent of the carnival he is attending.  There, among the artifacts, he finds an old, withered "Noble Savage" (Depp) who says the boy reminds him of someone he knew once.  This old wizened fellow is eccentric to say the least, insisting on feeding a dead crow sitting atop his head.  He begins to regale the boy with the tale of his old partner, John Reid (Hammer), better known as, The Lone Ranger.

Flashback to Colby, Tx in 1869.  Train baron, Latham Cole (Wilkinson) is hard at work promoting his company's new railroad that will connect the state to points as far west as San Francisco.  As a sign of goodwill for the community and to prove that western lawlessness will not be tolerated in Colby, he has arranged for deranged criminal, Butch Cavendish (Fichtner) to be transported to the area for his long awaited hanging.  Texas Rangers led by Dan Reid, the lawman who captured the criminal, are waiting at the station to take Cavendish into custody when he arrives.

On the train transporting Cavendish is Ranger Reid's straight-laced, law abiding brother, attorney John Reid.  In the prison car, Cavendish is chained with a mysterious Native American wearing a dead crow on top of his head, Tonto.  Tonto is on a mission that only he seems to understand.  Cavendish is freed when his gang raids the train.  Tonto and Reid meet for the first time here as Reid attempts to assist the outgunned law officials guarding the train's dangerous host. 

Reid teams up with his brother, six other Rangers, and a tracker to hunt down the Cavendish Gang.  When they are betrayed by one of their own and ambushed, a chain of events is set into motion that transforms by-the-book John Reid into a masked vigilante who rides for justice and vengeance. 

One of the issues I have with The Lone Ranger is that it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.  It ranges from gory, to comical, to wildly action-packed.  And that would all be fine if the movie made those transitions seamlessly.  Unfortunately, it does not.  Seriously, you "see" Cavendish cut out and eat a human heart and five minutes later you're back to crazy Tonto with the dead bird on his head.  The parts don't always fit nicely.  I think this film would have benefited a great deal by picking a lane.  It would have worked better as either a complete farce or a bloody, visceral type actioner.  But, the studio takes the easy way out by making it a PG-13 jumble of nonsensical parts to try and draw the largest audiences.  You can't always force this.  Sometimes you have to let the material judge where a film needs to go.

Now, maybe it's just me, but I believe if you are making a movie about a legendary hero, the hero should be, oh, I don't know, believably heroic?  I'm not bagging Armie Hammer's performance because I think he did the best he could with what he had, but, spirit warrior or not, how the heck did he survive the first half hour let alone the entire two and a half hours? He's shot and beaten so many times (even by Tonto) that it's not believable that this is a man who should be feared.  His horse (who is much smarter than the Ranger) saves him a majority of the time. 

Did I mention the movie is two and a half hours?  I guess it's fruitless to complain about the length of movies these days, particularly the summer blockbusters, but 20-30 minutes could have easily been on the cutting room floor.  With a few exceptions, the attempts at comedy are mildly amusing at best.  The action sequences are decent, but nothing that keeps you in awe.  There's a very lame attempt to create some drama through a contrived love triangle involving the Ranger, his brother, and his brother's wife that, thankfully, goes nowhere.  The big reveal involving the Ranger realizing the railroad tycoon's criminal involvement in the events of the film is a little far-fetched for my tastes.

Now, let's get on to what I'm sure everyone is wondering about.  Johnny Depp.  This performance was just...weird.  Yes, I know Johnny Depp is the unofficial "King of Weird" these days, but there's a problem.  With this role as Tonto, last year's role as Barnabus Collins, The Mad Hatter, and, maybe his most famous role as Captain Jack Sparrow, he's becoming a little one note.  And this note is getting old.  Depp is one of the better actors in Hollywood and he's better than his recent material. That's not to say he's been bad in his films, but it seems every role he takes now is the same, flamboyantly over-the-top character.  I defy you to tell me the difference between Tonto and Jack Sparrow other than the former spouting the term "kemo sabe."  I'm ready for the more slightly off-kilter Johnny Depp that you saw in films like Sleepy Hollow, From Hell, and Secret Window.  It's time to put the out-his-mind Depp to rest for a few roles as I believe the specter of Captain Jack is doing him a disservice.  It seems that either Depp or Hollywood thinks he needs to equal or top that character. 

There is some good in The Lone Ranger.  William Fichtner is ghoulishly vile as the Ranger's arch-enemy.  He's the best reason for sitting through this mish mosh.  Tom Wilkinson gives a more than credible performance as the megalomaniacal railroad tycoon. There are three laugh-out-loud moments I counted, one involving a doll, one involving a thrown rock, and one in the very last scene of the movie (got a nice water shower from the girlfriend with that one). 

The Lone Ranger could have been so much more than it was.  It's not a bad movie so much as it's a movie with little pizazz.  Unless you're a junkie who consumes everything Johnny Depp, this is one you shouldn't be disappointed to wait for on Netflix, Red Box, On Demand (still too much money), etc. 

The Dark Lord of the Sith says:

**1/2 stars

Ratings Legend
Zero *= Don't waste your time. Pure dreck! Dreck is too good for this! Blind me please!
1 *= Fuggedaboutit!
2 *= Average, Mediocre, Nothing Special
3 *= Good viewing. Much better than a poke in the eye.
4 *= Great. Could possibly foot the price of a non-Matinee.
5 *= Pure eye candy. Hall of Fame material here.