Review #914 - Lone Ranger, The (2013)
THE SCOOP
Director: Gore Verbinski
Cast: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson, Helena Bonham Carter
Plot: Native American warrior Tonto recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid, a man of the law, into a legend of justice.
Genre: Action / Adventure / Western
Awards: Nom. for 2 Oscars - Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Visual Effects.
Runtime: 149min
Rating: PG13 for sequences of intense action and violence, and some suggestive material.
IN RETROSPECT (Spoilers: NO)
“There
come a time, when good man must wear mask.”
Johnny Depp
essentially transports himself from the pirates and the high seas to a
landlocked Wild West with sheriffs and bandits.
A Jerry Bruckheimer production of a Gore Verbinski film, The Lone Ranger is hopefully a rousing
start to Disney's new wannabe franchise after the popular success of The Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Its box-office
figures will determine if a sequel will make any sort of headway, but judging
by what I’ve seen, I must say that mainstream audiences will take to
Verbinski's new film like fish to water.
Only that the water is muddied by a host of narrative clichés and some
of the most preposterous action sequences you will see this year.
Depp plays Tonto, a
tribal kind of person who has lost his tribe because of an incident, and whose
face must have erased chalk work from thousands of blackboards. His partner, an outlaw of sorts played by
Armie Hammer (The Social Network,
2010; J. Edgar, 2011) wears a mask to
battle the violent bandits of the West.
The movie tells the
story of Hammer's character from the perspective of Tonto, who recounts from
memory the events that would make up the film's bloated 149-minute
runtime. That is an issue because the
film seems to be striving for an epic Western feel, but in the end its
blockbuster sensibilities result in a comedy-adventure that doesn't quite hit
the high notes of grandeur.
There are a couple of
minutes of pure visual-aural grandeur though as an arrangement of Rossini's “William
Tell Overture” accompanies the beginning of the climactic act. Depp's performance brings up the humour
quotient, and it must be said that without his presence in the film (and as its
key marketing strategy), The Lone Ranger
would have bombed, John Carter-style. It still might, if poor reviews sway
audiences away.
The annoying toggling
between the timelines of an old Tonto inconceivably recounting the legend of
the masked horse-rider to a young boy in a museum, and the younger Tonto and
his noble “sidekick” during their adventures on the high sands absorbs much of
the narrative momentum, contributing to some needless pacing issues.
The
Lone Ranger is like Spielberg's dud Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - action
that borders on ridiculousness, plot development that lacks sense-making, and
humour that falls flat more frequently than not. Depp, however, makes the journey more
bearable, but not necessarily believable.
GRADE: C-
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