Disney doesn't put the Pirates
of the Caribbean think tank
on just any ol' thing. When the combination of Johnny Depp, Jerry Bruckheimer,
and Gore Verbinski get together it’s with the intention of crafting another $1B
franchise, and that's exactly what the hopes for The Lone Ranger are. And hey, maybe Disney will get
what they want, because there's very little difference to be found between
either. Depp does good quirk, Verbinski does big action, the jokes are
plentiful but not necessarily funny, the running time is 40 minutes too long,
and despite being an origin story on the iconic Western hero you'll still be
asking "Who was that masked man?" when all is said and done.
The chief problem makes itself known
immediately, as the film opens in 1933 San Francisco, a precocious young boy
dressed as the titular ranger makes his way through a traveling circus, coming
upon an old Native American exhibit. The Indian mannequin turns out to be very
much alive, an aged Tonto (Depp) as it turns out, and who takes the opportunity
to recount his very first meetings with The Lone Ranger and their earliest
adventures. Bouncing back and forth to this older Tonto does to the film's
pacing what a broken hoof would do to the Ranger's horse, Silver. Already
saddling us with a bloated 2 1/2 runtime, the non-linear approach makes it feel
like 3 1/2, without adding anything of worth.
Not that it would have mattered much
because the meat of the story...well, there isn't much meat to it and what
little is there is painfully dull. Justin Haythe is credited with the script
but it's really 'Pirates' scribes Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott whose
fingerprints are all over it, and storytelling really isn't their bag. Depp was
able to cover up the emptiness of their writing when Jack Sparrow was still a
totally unique character, but his Tonto is so familiar that it's not going to
hide anything. In his leading man bid, Armie Hammer is naive lawman John Reid,
who returns to his southwest hometown where his brother Dan (a ruggedly
charismatic James Badge Dale) is the baddest Texas Ranger in town. After he's
killed by the heart-munching Butch Cavendish (a filthy and gross William
Fichtner), John teams up with the eccentric and clearly insane Tonto to get
justice. But what does justice mean for someone like John? His brother had a
"shoot first" approach to the legal process, and Tonto certainly has
his own ideas, but John's journey will have him changing his thoughts on due
process in a major way.
You can feel the strains of franchise
building in the relationship between The Lone Ranger and Tonto. It's the latter
who we learn the most about, delving into his past in a way that has never been
done before. It's mildly interesting to discover why he wears a dead bird on
his head, which he constantly is feeding for some goofy reason, and why he's
such a proponent for vigilante justice. But the further they go back, the more
Tonto looks like a psycho rather than a guy with an off brand sense of humor.
The distinction matters, and there are far too many moments where Tonto is more
disturbing than funny. He still gets better treatment than the Ranger, who we
learn almost nothing about other than that he once had a thing for his dead
brother's widow (Ruth Wilson), and she still has one for him. Wait, isn't
this movie called The
Lone Ranger? Shouldn't it maybe be about him? Just a little? Mostly we get
the Ranger and Tonto jumping from one sticky situation to another, with lots of
stuff happening but little of it engaging. There's some good comedic mileage
out of Tonto's utter lack of respect for the Ranger, who he feels should have
died and his brother Dan resurrected.
Hammer plays the straight man beautifully
opposite Depp, most of the film walking a line between professorial pantywaist
and the dashing hero we know he'll turn out to be. Depp's deadpan interpretation
of Tonto sounds like it was ripped from old episodes of Daniel Boone, and those
who openly complained about his being cast in the role (Depp claims Native
American heritage that hasn't been proven) will probably find reason to take
issue. Fortunately there are better portrayals that emerge later in the film,
at least for a few minutes before white man greed interferes with their simple
way of life. Women are basically a non-factor in this masculine Old West world,
with Wilson having little to do but be a potential target for the Ranger's
enemies. Most egregiously, Helena Bonham Carter is completely wasted as a
brothel owner who gives new meaning to the phrase "killer legs".
Tonally a nightmare, broad comedy clashes
with a subplot involving the white man's slaughter of the Native American
population. There's a great deal of violence, more gruesome than one would
expect from a Disney film, and sometimes it's played up for laughs when other
times we're expected to find it sobering. A lot of this can be forgiven because
everything looks so damn good, easily the best work Verbinski has done, and
it's clear he took his experience directing the brilliant animated western Rango and put it to good use. Everything
looks authentic and gorgeous, from the saddlebags to the tumbleweeds, captured
beautifully with an incredible level of attention. Verbinski pushed the budget
well past its limit, and it shows in two amazing bookend train sequences. The
opening scene promises adventure on a massive scale that we never truly get.
The final one, a dizzying dual-track battle set to The Lone Ranger's iconic
William Tell Overture, ends the film on an exquisitely energetic note.
What it boils down to is that this is
meant to be the first chapter in a bigger story, and unfortunately it was
written like one. Overlong and needlessly convoluted, The Lone Ranger lacks the adventure needed to make the
1930s radio and TV hero a modern day action star.
