Review of The Lone Ranger (2003) by Andrew C — 20 Sep 2014

I don't get the insanely negative reviews this film got. A lot of reviews focused on how revisionist this film is. I didn't find it any more so than many modern westerns. Its view of western expansion as essentially driven by white man's greed is a thing, but it was present much more strongly in Dances with Wolves among others. Heck, even Maverick had the Indians portrayed entirely as victims of white agression.

They also focused on its failed self-knowing attempts to deconstruct the legend. I think that's giving this film both too much and too little credit. It does take the legendary aspects and rationalize them, but this is exactly the same thing every movie based on another property does now. They take what worked originally, poke fun of it, insert their own "witty and self-referential" twists, completely rewrite the characters, and then try and suck as many iconic moments out as they can (again self-referentially). Sometimes this works, but more often it's hit-and-miss as it is here. There is nothing particularly special about this film.

I suppose that one issue (apart from nostalgia) is that these revisionist themes don't blend particularly well with the silly and lighthearted tone of the film. There is some truth to this, but the film is hurt more by character choices than plot ones. The way the characters are written there is no need for these characters to team up, and certainly no reason for Tonto to accept his role as sidekick. This is a problem in a lot of adaptations of famous properties: they don't give their characters sufficient motivations to justify their partnership since the audience is already supposed to expect it. This film does it better than some, particularly Green Hornet (his descendent ironically) which made the characters so antagonistic and petty that I had difficulties believing that Cato didn't just kill him. Here both characters are likeable, they just have goals and motivations that shouldn't lead them in the direction that they go.

Tonto is actually nuts, clearly written so in order to give Johnny Depp another role to overact in. It's not that he isn't funny, it's just that this decision greatly limits the direction the film can go in. Arnie Hammer has a rather more thankless task which he pulls off quite well. His Reid is a sophisticated city boy returning to the hometown of his youth. He is impossibly idealistic and doesn't even want to hold a gun.

Tonally this film is completely irrationsl. Your opinion of it will probably depend on how much crazy you can handle. You get Johnny Depp constantly feeding the dead bird on his head, a horse that keeps getting places no horse should reach, and a whore with an artificial leg that houses a massive and impractical gun. By the end of the film we have a horse riding along the top of a speeding train. It's either impossibly awesome or utterly ridiculous. And best of all it's all done to a criminally awesome overuse of the William Tell Overture.

So I liked this film quite a bit. It isn't a great film by any means but it deserved a better reception than it got. The tone was light-hearted, the action scenes clear and sometimes inventive, and the characters amusing. Worth checking out.