The Lone Ranger has been playing for a few weeks now. Unfortunately, it's on it's way to becoming a box office disaster and, at this point, I think they'd be lucky to break even. Normally, I wouldn't give half a shit; when John Carter became the year's biggest blowout, I kinda rejoiced because Disney makes so much money that it's disgusting and they were well deserving of a failure (plus, fuck that movie).
But this is another story. The Lone Ranger was made by the same studio that did the the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy and that other unrelated fourth one that I still refuse to acknowledge. The films are pretty indistinguishable. Even if you didn't know that it was the same studio, you would no doubt sense the similarities and Johnny Depp being a lead role doesn't help disguise that.
The movie starts on a boardwalk carnival in the 1930's which is appropriate because that's when the radio show first got started. We see a young boy who's dressed up as the Lone Ranger. He's quickly enticed into a Wild West exhibit where he sees a wax mannequin of a very elderly Johnny Depp in a display titled Savage Native in his Natural Habitat. It isn't long before Depp springs to life and starts telling the boy the story of the Lone Ranger. Whether the exhibit is really coming to life or if it's just in the boy's imagination is left for the audience to speculate but the movie will occasionally return to this setting whenever the boy interrupts the story and it reminds me of movies like Princess Bride; it's not really needed but it's a charming touch.
The story begins with an action sequence which flows much like the action did in the Pirates movies; goofy and humorous but in such a way that everything times and flows perfectly. The fight ends in a train wreck that allegedly was not done with CGI. Whether that's true or not, I don't know for sure, but if it is then it's a damn impressive sequence.
The cast is pretty strong in this movie. The two leads Depp and Arnie Hammer in his first major role, are both very good and they're funny together. Depp,who's character's name is Tonto, in this movie is nearly identical to Captain Jack Sparrow except with an Native American accent. That's none too surprising to me but it only makes this film seem even more like Pirates of the Caribbean.
The rest of the cast is pretty good too. The love interest, Ruth Wilson is another strong part but the villains in this movie are a bit bland. Not to the point where I don't like them but they simply failed to interest me much and I grew bored of them. I feel like Helena Bonham Carter, who plays a strumpet and is simply named Red, is in this movie for no other reason than that she's a star and she could probably be completely cut out.
But overall I think this movie was pretty alright. I'm not really sure what it was that everyone seemed to hate so much. It had good action and was funny. At a running time of something like 150 minutes, it may have been a little long and I'll admit I was getting somewhat bored in the latter parts but at the time that I saw it, I had been awake for 30 hours straight and it kept me from falling asleep so that should count for something.
The cinematography is gorgeous and just about every shot in the film has amazing backgrounds. That's quite important for this movie because setting plays such a big part in Westerns and in this case, they really nailed it.
If you compare it to other modern Westerns such as True Grit or HBO's Deadwood, it's doomed, but overall, I think this movie is pretty worth it especially if for nothing else but the last action scene which involved two trains, a lot of jumping and was absolutely great. I don't think the Lone Ranger really deserves to be a disaster when bullshit like Despicable Me 2 is seeing enormous success. Sure, they may have been trying to capitalize on the name, The Lone Ranger, but at least it's a somewhat original film. It's chock-full of classic cliches that were clearly lifted directly from the serials that inspired it and, like those, it thrives on the kind of situations that make you think, "so how are they getting out of this one?" which is great because that was such a huge basis of the original show. It reminds me of the Indiana Jones films in that sense; making what's old seem new again. So yeah, you might want to see this one at some point.
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