If you’re on the fence with seeing The Lone Ranger, save your money. It’s a bloated, leaden bore.
I didn’t think this was possible. It’s a movie about the Lone Ranger. His theme song is The Overture to William Tell. He rides white horse called Silver. He has an Native American sidekick named Tonto. And he lives in the Old West, saving the day.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not nostalgic about The Lone Ranger. I’m not even sure I watched it growing up. But he’s a part of our cultural lexicon, so to see a movie about him get so many things wrong was a wonder.
Where do I begin? Perhaps with the story, which is not as rousing as I’d expected it to be. The movie is needlessly framed by a very old Tonto telling a young boy the story of how a prim and proper lawyer named John Reid came to be the legend of justice. I would have gone with a simple, heroic story that introduces the Lone Ranger and gives him an adventure on which to go, like Raiders of the Lost Ark did with Indiana Jones, but the SIX writers who had a hand in crafting the screenplay went a more complex, and less interesting, route.
Everyone has a back-story, told through flashback, which makes them a flashback within a flashback: Reid; his love interest, Rebecca; the town madam, Red; the villain, Butch Cavandish; the entrepreneur, Cole, who dreams of making a fortune building the first railroad to connect the two ends of the continent; and Tonto. Through these layers of complexity, the filmmakers lost sight of what they were making: a movie about one guy.
The movie opens and closes with two great action scenes, but the heavy-handed story telling weighs down the middle of the picture. After an exciting opening in which Cavandish escapes from a moving train, nothing pulse quickening happens again until the climactic scene. This gives viewers 90 minutes of dull exposition. I found focusing difficult.
Just as damaging is the wildly uneven tone of the movie, which careens from cartoonish to somber and back again. One second, you’re watching the U.S. Cavalry mow down the remnants of an Indian tribe with a chain gun, and the next, you’re watching Johnny Depp as Tonto run down a cave, screaming like his loin cloth is wrapped too tightly, to escape a bomb. Then back to the slaughter, and then back to Depp making a joke about Silver. Nearly the entire film moves to this awkward rhythm.
As labored as the story is, it makes sense: Someone is willing to do a great deal of evil to get the silver needed to finance the building of the railroad, which will give the person untold power to control the future. What doesn’t make sense is the lack of charisma on the part of the Lone Ranger.
Armie Hammer, the actor who plays the Lone Ranger, is a good looking guy and a solid actor. So why at the end of the movie did I remember more of Depp’s performance as the SIDEKICK than Hammer’s performance as the MAIN CHARACTER? I believe the imbalance to which I referred earlier is to blame. Also, Reid doesn’t fully transform into the title character until the final 20 minutes. He takes so long to become the Lone Ranger, it’s easy to forget the movie is supposed to be about him.
The Lone Ranger isn’t all bad. The production design is extravagant; there isn’t a shot in the movie that doesn’t ooze Old West. And director Gore Verbinksi (the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies) gives the film an epic feel with wide shots filled with people and activity. Moreover, he staged the action beautifully. I only wish the other 80 percent of the movie was as engaging.
Essentially, The Lone Ranger is a 129 minute origin story followed by an exciting 20-minute action scene. Entire characters and storylines could have been left on the cutting room floor to no ill effect. But even with the pacing problem solved, The Lone Ranger would have been a tonally uneven movie lacking a hero worthy of its name.
Two stars out of four. Rated PG-13 for intense violence and action and some suggestive material.