Two-and-a-half hours. Ugh. So for those
of you who don't know, The Lone Ranger (2013) is pretty much a remake
of The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) except with no plot to kidnap
the president. We've had enough presidential action movies for one
summer.
It follows ex-Ranger John Reid and his
Native American friend Tonto on their quest for revenge and justice
against the guys who murdered their loved ones and are engineering a
war to profit off of. It is a drawn-out story involving unoriginal
plot lines and a title character who dates his brother Dan's widow
just days after her husband's death. What a nice guy. In fact for
most of the movie the Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) is kind of a weenie.
He is largely overshadowed by his eccentric sidekick Tonto played by
Johnny Depp who unfortunately is about as Native as me. For villains
we have Butch Cavendish, the cannibalistic murderer who looks a lot
like Captain Barbossa (this film was made by the same guys who did
POTC, you know). Our other villain is railroad tycoon Latham Cole
(AKA Lord Bosscrime).
One of the things you'll notice rather
quickly about this film is that the studios involved tried to make it
appropriate for children but also appealing to adults. This makes the
film into a clumsy combination of sometimes dumb jokes (including
poop jokes) and surprisingly graphic violence for a Disney film. The
whole movie is told through flashbacks by Tonto (who of course can
recall in great detail events that he was not present to witness),
and this only serves to both pad out the already long run time and to
make the film more child-friendly. Just like with Pirates of the
Caribbean, the action scenes are terrifically over-the-top
spectacles: the kind where people are thrown and tossed around like
rag dolls and yet never seem to break any bones. These kinds of
overblown action scenes seem ill-suited to the western genre which is
normally more grounded in reality. Nevertheless one thing that this
movie does extremely well is the setting. The highly-detailed sets
and the panoramic longshots look amazing.
Sadly, Lone Ranger drops the ball on so
many occasions. Characters will inexplicably become stupid for the
sake of plot convenience, while other characters will suddenly
remember how to speak a second language halfway through a scene! The
running gag of people not understanding the mask was not funny at
all. The one-legged prostitute chick was pointless; she has about
four minutes of screen time and in the grand scheme of things doesn't
really matter much. Additionally there are so many things that don't make any sense whatsoever. Like how did Tonto get so good
a making bullets? How can a horse pull a buried person out of the
ground by only that person's teeth? Why was a stationary ceremonial train
full of passengers? Why does Cole allow Cavendish to walk around out
in the open even after showing his wanted poster to everybody? Does
Cole really think the railroad board members are just going to let
him get away with his illegal takeover of the company? Why was that
part even necessary? I'd think that by this stage in the movie the
audience is already pretty sure that he's a bad guy.
In short, the Lone Ranger is an
overblown, over-hyped, over-budgeted mess of a western that tries
appealing to too many people at once. It's comparable to POTC; it
isn't as needlessly complicated but it somehow manages to have the
same run time. Really the only people who I can recommend this film
for is western fans – beggars can't be choosers, right? – and
Johnny Depp fans. This movie should've been called The Adventures of Tonto and
his Weenie Sidekick, the Lone Ranger.
Rating: one-and-a-half stars out of
five.
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