The Lone Ranger (2013)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

Comment: Why don’t you show your face on the website? Most other bloggers do.
Dusty: There come a time, when good man must wear mask.

Rating: PG-13
Director: Gore Verbinski
Writers: Justin Haythe (screenplay), Ted Elliott (screenplay), Terry Rossio (screenplay),
Stars: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, William Fichtner, Ruth Wilson
Release Date: July 3, 2013 (United States)
Run time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

THE PLOT:

via wiki:

In 1933, at a San Francisco funfair, a boy named Will who idolizes the legendary Lone Ranger encounters the elderly Comanche Tonto, who starts recounting his experiences with the Old West adventurer, 64 years earlier.

In 1869, lawyer John Reid returns home to Colby, Texas via the uncompleted Transcontinental Railroad, managed by railroad tycoon Latham Cole. Unknown to Reid, the train also carries Tonto and outlaw Butch Cavendish, who is being transported for his hanging after being captured by Dan Reid, John’s Texas Ranger brother. Cavendish’s gang rescues Butch and derails the train. Tonto is subsequently jailed. Dan deputizes John as a Texas Ranger, giving him a silver star badge that belonged to their late father, and with six others they go after the Cavendish gang. Cavendish’s men ambush and kill their pursuers while Cavendish slays Dan and devours his heart as revenge for his imprisonment. Tonto escapes from jail, comes across the dead men and buries them. However, a horse awakens John as a “spirit walker”, and Tonto explains John cannot be killed in battle. Tonto also tells him Collins, one of the Rangers, betrayed Dan and is working with Cavendish. Now thought to be dead, John wears a mask to protect his identity from enemies. Tonto gives John a silver bullet made from the fallen Rangers’ badges and tells him to use it on Cavendish, whom he believes to be a mythical beast called a wendigo.

At a brothel Collins recently visited, Red Harrington informs the two about Dan and Collins’ fight over a cursed silver rock. Meanwhile, Cavendish’s men, disguised as Comanches, raid frontier settlements. John and Tonto arrive after raiders abduct Dan’s widow and son, Rebecca and Danny. Regretting his earlier actions, Collins attempts to help Rebecca and Danny escape, but is shot dead by Cole, who rescues them. Claiming the raiders are Comanches, Cole announces the continued construction of the railroad and dispatches US Cavalry Captain Jay Fuller to wipe out the Comanches. A Comanche tribe captures John and Tonto after the pair finds railroad tracks in Native territory. The leader tells John of Tonto’s past: As a boy, Tonto rescued Cavendish and another man from near-death and showed them a mountain full of silver ore in exchange for a pocket watch. The men murdered the tribe to keep the location a secret, leaving Tonto with guilt which led to him believing the two were wendigos.

Tonto and John escape as the cavalry attack the Comanche. At the silver mine, the duo captures Cavendish. Tonto demands John use the silver bullet to kill Cavendish, but John refuses. Upon returning Cavendish to Cole and Fuller’s custody, Cole is revealed to be Cavendish’s partner and brother. Fuller, fearful of being labeled a war criminal for slaughtering the tribe unprovoked, sides with Cole. Rebecca is held hostage, and John is returned to the mine to be executed. Tonto rescues him and the two flee. Realizing Cole is too powerful to be taken down lawfully and regretful since his arrogance in ignoring Tonto led to the slaughter of the Comanches and the kidnapping of his loved ones, John dons the mask again.

At Promontory Summit, during the railroad’s union ceremony, Cole reveals his true plan: to take control of the railroad company and use the mined silver to gain more power. John and Tonto steal nitroglycerin and use it to destroy a railroad bridge. With Red’s help, Tonto steals the train with the silver, and Cole, Cavendish and Fuller pursue him in a second train on which Rebecca and Dan Jr. are being held captive. On horseback, John pursues both trains. After fights on both trains, John kills Cavendish and Fuller, and rescues Rebecca and Dan Jr. Tonto hands back Cole the pocket watch, before the train drives off the destroyed bridge, drowning Cole underneath all the silver.

The town recognizes John as a hero and offers him a law-enforcement position, but John declines and rides off with Tonto. Back in 1933, Will questions the truth of the story. Tonto gives Will a silver bullet, tells him to decide for himself and leaves in the form of a crow. Inspired, Will puts on a mask.

My Review:

The Lone Ranger is remembered as a gigantic flop. Critics panned the movie and it lost a LOT of money for Disney. The decision to cast Johnny Depp as the Native American sidekick, Tonto, was met with a lot of negative press, and the movie more generally suffered additional bad press regarding studio in-fighting before it was even released. On top of that, The Lone Ranger was an IP that no longer carried a lot of cultural weight – meaning it had no built-in audience champing at the bit to see it. The Lone Ranger TV series ran from 1949 until 1957, and though it remained popular for a few decades after due to the show’s long run in syndication, by 2013 even that run was in the long gone past. All of the above is a shame because though the movie had some flaws, it was actually pretty good.

I’ll discuss the flaws first before I get to what I liked about it. First, it was just too long. I liked the story, but I think it could have been condensed and clipped under the two hour mark without losing much. Second, the movie couldn’t decide who its audience should be. The comedic gags and the special effects were made for a younger audience… and boy, oh boy, were there a lot of great special effects in this movie. On the other hand, one of the primary antagonists – played by the brilliant William Fichtner – was way too dark a character for a younger audience. He was literally a murderous cannibal who cut out the hearts of his victims. Writing him to be that dark, and showing it on-screen, gave emotional weight and higher stakes for the story, but it probably alienated a lot of parents (or grandparents?) from introducing their then-kids to the heroic horse-riding character they watched in syndication growing up. The end result was that the movie was too inconsistent tonally to really have an obvious target audience. It felt like they spent a lot of money entertaining hypothetical younger viewers who couldn’t ultimately go to watch it due to the dark nature of the story.

The movie also has a longer term perception problem due to the personal lives of its cast. Johnny Depp’s legal and personal woes were highly publicized, though I think a lot of the public eventually came around to taking his side in the ugly and very public divorce with actress Amber Heard. Armie Hammer, on the other hand, has not had a personal public redemption arc to my knowledge. He’s been tagged with several sexual assault accusations and cannibalism-fantasy accusations, which has led to various tell-all media stories about his and his dysfunctional family’s history. Needless to say, that’s a lot for the film to overcome both in the short term and the longer term.

On the plus side though, the movie was an ambitious, emotionally-moving, bombastic, superhero epic origin story. John Reid’s journey from law-abiding lawyer to mask-wearing vigilante was well-told. His motivation was easy to understand, as was how he developed a sense of disillusionment with the legal system of which he had previously been an ardent supporter. Like all good vigilante stories – where the audience supports the guy in the mask anyway – we learn alongside the hero that corrupt men who operate above the law need to face a justice that also operates above the law. John Reid’s love-story was interesting, believable, and successfully delivered. He loved his brother’s wife. She loved him in return. Their love was not to be, due to life circumstances (including the fact she was married John Reid’s brother Dan)… then the circumstances changed.

Johnny Depp was the star of the movie, balancing Tonto’s role as the primary source of comedic relief with the character’s hidden raw emotional pain. It’s a difficult thing to convey without words that you’re hiding a painful past, especially while making the audience laugh, but Depp’s Tonto does. That makes the reveal of that painful past more moving when the story shows it to us.

Was it a big deal that Depp was cast to play the character? It did not bother me. I thought he found the balance between playing an eccentric character (even the other Comanche in the film think Tonto is crazy), while also remaining respectful of that character’s racial identity. I thought it helped, too, that the non-crazy Comanche were played by Native actors. At any rate, Tonto was a very difficult role and one of the best actors in the world was cast to play it. He played it well.

The Lone Ranger is outstanding in a couple areas. The musical score is absolutely fantastic, and it was particularly great in the final big action sequence to hear the TV series theme (the William Tell Overture.) That moment could have been hokey, but it absolutely landed. The movie is also just replete with great action sequences. For a two and a half hour movie, it was almost nothing but action sequences (with a particularly excellent train scene near the end of the film.) You might argue given the film’s budget problems that they did too much in this area. However, as the money is not my problem, I highly enjoyed them and they added a very grandiose feel to the festivities which matched up well with the story and the occasionally bombastic score.

Just to give you a sense of how completely unhinged (in a good way) the action sets were for this movie, I present the “behind the scenes” clip below:

Overall, I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected. It wasn’t perfect, but you could feel how much love, blood, sweat, and tears were put into it, and on the whole, there was more good in the movie than bad. It would have been worth watching just to hear the musical score and to see the ridiculously over-the-top start to finish action sets.

Have you seen The Lone Ranger? If so, what did you think?