THE LONE RANGER
DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski
CAST: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fichtner, Helena Bonham Carter and Barry Pepper
CLASSIFICATION: 10-12PG M
RUNNING TIME: 149 minutes
RATING: **
FILLED with high jinks, pratfalls, very contemporary ideas around the Wild West and Americans’ guilt around their indigenous people, macabre imagery and complex psychological messages, The Lone Ranger is a movie in search of a direction.
Every now and then a brilliant idea pops up its head unexpectedly in a scene, but then is steamrollered by an excess of overdone CGI spectacle.
And there are some interesting ideas around the creation of myth and icons, but they are lost in the welter of silliness meets complex social commentary.
Director Gore Verbinski has turned his attention to the Wild West now that he has milked the pirate genre for all it was worth, and he has certainly created the basis for a wild new entertainment park ride for Disney.
What he has not created, though, is a movie that makes much sense.
The basic story makes a sort of filmic sense – it is the origins story of how lawyer John Reid (Hammer) becomes a masked hero way back in Texas in the late 1800s.
In a way the film is very respectful of the TV icon because Verbinski has checked all the items on his to do list – silver bullets, “Hi ho Silver, away!”, the sidekick named Tonto, the white hat, the clever horse, lots of nitroglycerin and a daring chase sequence involving a train.
However, the creation of the iconic image of the lone Texas ranger, fighting for justice in the Wild West with only a trusty steed and a Native American sidekick is hijacked by the story of the laying down of the transcontinental railroad tracks and weirdly fascinating characters popping up in the weirdest of places.
The villain – Fichtner’s cowboy with cannibal tendencies – is a disturbing bad guy and Helena Bonham Carter makes a great oddball madam.
Johnny Depp’s psychologically scarred Comanche warrior Tonto is the story’s focus, though it is Hammer’s idealistic lawyer who becomes the hero on the white horse. Their easy chemistry saves the film somewhat because the charm lies in their growing relationship.
Depp plays the character as straight as possible considering he is walking around with a dead bird on his head. Or rather, Tonto seems a rather straightforward character when compared to Captain Jack Sparrow.
Hammer is all noble intention mixed with growing awareness of his place in this wild world.
But great characters do not a story make – for that we need a cohesive narrative and there is just too much happening to distract the viewer.
This film is framed as if it is a story being retold to a young child who is visiting a travelling carnival show in 1933 and this dipping in and out of the story highlights the surrealism of Depp’s character as well as the story, which also segues into Dances With Wolves territory at some point .
Playing around with the serious ideas of the Comanche’s fatalism and Tonto’s guilt around the destruction of his people does not sit well with killer bunny rabbits and a horse that climbs on to roofs.
If you give yourself over to the sheer spectacle of what you are seeing, though, by the time the William Tell Overture starts to play, the impossible horse stunts and equally impossibly straight shots will have you chortling along with glee because this is the modern version of a Saturday morning TV adventure.
There’s a lot of violence and it takes way too long to get to the much-awaited chase sequence, but as long as you don’t take it seriously, you’ll manage to sit your way through this one.
If you liked John Carter, The Green Hornet or Wild, Wild West, you will like this.