Movie Review – The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger (2013) – The classic western icon of the “Lone Ranger” returns to the screen as John Reid (Armie Hammer) survives an ambush that kills his brother.  The killers leave him behind, believing him dead.  A Comanche warrior/mystic, Tonto (Johnny Depp), finds the Ranger and joins forces with him to track down the bad guys.

I swore I wasn’t going to watch this movie.  The trailers were so wretched that I saw no reason to spend even a matinee ticket’s cost on it.

Turns out I was I right.

Astoundingly, Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the producers, believes that this is an under appreciated classic that will find a following as the years go by.  He believes the same thing about 2012’s “John Carter of Mars” (see my review “John Carter of Meh“).  I can only believe that this is the early symptoms of dementia for the legendary Hollywood producer.  If there is a future following for these movies it will be only as colossal catastrophes.

There is one good thing about this movie.  Visually, it is impressive.  There are clear homages to the work of John Ford and many of the great westerns.  Director Gore Verbinski manages to make the best of a visual hand made entirely of aces.

There’s not much else to recommend this travesty.  It’s an insult to the icon of “The Lone Ranger”, an insult to American Indians, an insult to westerns and an insult to any movie viewer with an IQ above room temperature.  Depp as Tonto is just awful.  Armie Hammer’s John Reid is an imbecile.  There is not a single moment in the movie that isn’t utterly predictable.  Well, let me reconsider that last thought.  The movie lurches from comic to drama in a completely unpredictable manner.  It’s like they had two completely different concepts for the movie, couldn’t pick one and just jammed the two scripts together.  There’s an utter disregard for the “canon” of the Lone Ranger story that would be fine if this were a full on parody.  But it’s not.  There’s way too much serious violence that would be fine if this were a grown up approach to the well worn story. I mean, seriously, how do you go from cutesy, smug badinage to cutting out a Texas Ranger’s heart and eating it?  Thankfully, virtually all of that takes place off screen.  Quite honestly, the smartest, most “together” character in the movie is the horse, Silver.

There’s a wrap around “narration” part that involves an elderly Tonto at a Wild West show that makes very little sense and adds even less to the movie.  And don’t even get me started on the cannibalistic, demon bunnies.  Oh, how I wish I were kidding.

The final straw for me was the realization that they had decided to make the recurring “joke” of the movie the line “So what’s with the mask?” in place of the iconic “Who was that masked man?”.  Some things are just unforgivable.

Thankfully the movie was a colossal failure at the box office so there won’t be a sequel.  Giacomo Rossini’s descendants should sue for the abuse of the “William Tell Overture”.

Rating – * Forget It