Disney revives a classic western pop icon in 'The
Lone Ranger,' the big-budget summer blockbuster starring Johnny Depp and Armand
'Armie' Hammer brought to you by the people behind the 'Pirates of the
Caribbean' franchise. Reportedly with a
budget of around $225 million, Disney gambled that a character derived from a
popular 1950's TV show (and before that, a 1930's radio show) will still have
relevancy and resonate with moviegoers today.
Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp reprise the roles
most famously known for Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels in the television
show. As he did for Jack Sparrow in
POTC, Depp infused the role of Tonto with his own quirks and a good dose of
irony and humor. In fact, his Tonto was so charismatic that the
sidekick overshadowed the titular hero.
Speaking of whom, the man named after baking soda (or is it the American industrialist?) played the straight-laced Lone Ranger
with so little personality and so much naïveté that I found the movie's caricature villain, Butch
Cavendish (William Fichtner), to be a much more interesting character than the
masked upholder of justice.
At two-and-a-half hours, 'The Lone Ranger' tests
our patience with a jumbled mess of a plot that could have been handled in two
hours or less. The simple good-versus-evil
storyline about the devious schemes of an evil rail tycoon did not need to be overbloated
with so many over-the-top, CG-heavy action scenes; they become tedious after a while and
each successive set-piece action sequence just get wackier and more unlikely
than the last. It got to the point that, in the end, I felt like I
was watching Road Runner on Looney Tunes.
Screenwriters Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio tried to follow the same formula as their POTC and Zorro flicks to the extreme, but in 'The Lone Ranger'
these tropes fell flat and seem contrived.
That isn't to say the movie is not without any redeeming feature; it shined in its slower
moments when Hammer's Lone Ranger and Depp's Tonto built their rapport and
camaraderie with humor, and when it took detours to portray colorful secondary personalities
like Madam Red Harrington (Helena Bonham Carter) with her leg gun. Be that as it may, I just can't bring myself to whole-heartedly embrace this movie. Sorry.
Grade: C+
Yeah, I'm wearing a dead bird on my head. Whatcha gonna do about it?
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