Review of The Lone Ranger (1956) by Maurice G — 22 Aug 2014

The past two summers were not very kind to Disney studios' live action efforts, as 2012's "John Carter" was a bomb of epic proportions, and 2013's "The Lone Ranger" didn't fare much better. Having now seen both, I can say that I found neither to be nearly as bad as they were made out to be, but I'm prepared to concede that some of this may be due to timing. I saw both movies long after their theatrical runs, and therefore long after their critical drubbings and box office failures. So going in, armed with that knowledge, my expectations were exceedingly low...so low, in fact, that perhaps the movies had nowhere to go but up and therefore surpassed them.

Conversely, if I'd seen the movies at the time of their initial release, before any sort of reputation had been established, it's possible I may have felt more of a let-down. These were hyped up summer movies (especially "The Lone Ranger," as it's a Johnny Depp vehicle helmed by his "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Rango" director Gore Verbinski), supposed to be the first chapters in lucrative franchises, and to go in while they were still new and fresh and with that kind of mindset...I think it's safe to say I would have been disappointed.

So, although I'd like to believe otherwise, maybe it's conceivable that my delayed timing in viewing these panned films has softened my opinion on them. Maybe. But even so, saying a film is not as bad as it was made out to be is not exactly a ringing endorsement. I still found "John Carter" to be a largely empty film-going experience, and though "The Lone Ranger" fares a bit better, I still can't recommend it. It's messy and far too long, and too much goes wrong along the way.

One of the main focal points of many critics' ire was Johnny Depp's performance as Tonto, the Native American sidekick of the Lone Ranger. While I agree there's an underlying problem with this casting choice--why not cast an actual Native American?--I found his performance to be typically Depp-ian, i.e., quirky and amusing. Nothing really new here, but still, I found Tonto to be one of the more interesting aspects of the film. He's certainly more captivating than the bland, eponymous hero, played by Armie Hammer of "The Social Network.".

At the beginng of the film, John Reid is a man of the law, a young attorney hoping to tame the Wild West. But when he and a group of Texas Rangers, including his older brother (James Badge Dale), are ambushed by outlaw Butch Cavendish (the great William Fichtner) and left for dead, Reid is nursed back to help by the Comanche Tonto. Tonto then encourages Reid to don a mask and become the Lone Ranger, a man who can become a symbol of justice and strike fear in the hearts of criminals everywhere.

Only Reid just doesn't exactly fit that description. He's kind of a whiner, and there's something a bit off when the hero of what is essentially a Western film doesn't like to fire a gun. We've seen this "boyscout" personality for heroes in other recent films, most notably Captain America, but as we saw in "The Winter Soldier," Cap's persona could be used as an effective counterpoint to the shades-of-gray dealings of his government superiors. We don't really get that here. In fact, Reid never even really seems to embrace his Lone Ranger identity, believing he can bring Cavendish to justice without resorting to theatrics. (Obviously, he is mistaken). The term "wet blanket" comes to mind when thinking of Reid.

With his square-jawed, all-American good looks, Armie Hammer certainly looks the part of Reid/The Lone Ranger, but something's just not right with his performance. Hammer was pitch-perfect as the snooty, privileged Winklevoss twins in "The Social Network," but he doesn't really come off as an action hero type. He seems better suited to play a more cerebral, perhaps villainous role. That may seem like typecasting after the Facebook film, but hey, I can only go by the roles I've seen him in, and he's a far better fit as the "Winklevi" than he is as the Lone Ranger.

I enjoyed watching some of Reid and Tonto's exploits, particularly the early-going action sequence on the train when they're chained together. Depp is able to get a lot of mileage out of Tonto's disparaging remarks towards his new partner (and we the audience find this amusing as well, as Reid just doesn't make for a very compelling hero). We also get a bit of a backstory on Tonto as well, as we come to realize that he has a very good reason for wanting to take Cavendish down himself.

But at other times, the movie's storylines just fall flat or don't come to any kind of fruition. There's a plot twist involving one of the villains that is so blatantly obvious that I really should've put quotation marks around the words "plot twist" (like so). We're told of a truce between the Native Americans and the white men, and when the truce is supposedly violated, the movie makes it sound as if there will be a big battle as a result of this. Well...there is a battle, although the proper word is probably "massacre," but it's over in about two minutes, and once it is, the movie basically sweeps this under the rug; it's never referred to again, which I found incredibly odd, considering the dramatic weight it was supposed to have carried.

Then there's the cavalry general played by Barry Pepper, whose motivations I don't quite understand. He oscillates between somewhat sympathetic and teeth-gnashing throughout the movie. And the climax is a mess, involving two runaway trains and characters hopping back and forth between the trains and shoot-outs and fist-fights and collisions and horseback riding and kids with slingshots and all around mass-confusion. I didn't know what was going on half the time, or which train any given character was on.

Although I was never bored by "The Lone Ranger," I was never too invested in it either. I love watching Johnny Depp do his oddball thing (even if he is playing a Native American), but in a film as disjointed as this, it comes off more as talent going to waste (like a Nic Cage performance in 95% of the movies he appears in these days). I don't see the movie as the gargantuan failure that most critics did, but it's still a pretty subpar effort. I can envision a successful bigscreen adaptation of the adventures of Tonto and the Ranger; unfortunately, this is not it.