Review of Rango (2011) by Halfwelshman — 06 Aug 2011

I must admit, I didn't know what to make of Rango five minutes in. The story does take a while to get going, and even longer to engage you. But when it does, you're in for a real treat, especially for film buffs.

The bulk of the plot is a loving homage to Chinatown, but there are numerous other film references throughout, particularly, and understandably, to classic westerns. The film looks great, filling a wild-west frontier town with hyper-real anthropomorphic animals, and giving your eyes a feast in extremely creative action set-pieces.

The voice acting is top-notch, particularly Johnny Depp who makes Rango a classic good-natured lovable loser, Ned Beatty who tips his hat to John Huston as the town of Dirt's devious mayor and Bill Nighy who channels the venomous spirit of Jack Palance's bounty hunter character in Shane.

Gore Verbinski is back on form, having made a clever, quirky, funny, character driven film more akin to the first Pirates of the Caribbean than their overblown and hectic sequels. The ending of the film is a little sudden and unsatisfying (though, happily it does contain the classic "riding into the sunset" shot) and the eco message is crow-barred in, but there is plenty in this rich, intelligent and humorous animation to satisfy.